"Two Evil Eyes" marks the reunion of Dario Argento and George Romero. This time the two eschew zombies in favor of contemporary retellings of Edgar Allen Poe tales. The movie is split into two stories (or do I call them evil eyes?), the first directed by Romero and the second by Argento. I'll tackle the stories individually, but rate the movie as a whole. Let's begin.
Romero directs "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." In it, a trophy wife (a bit past her prime, in my opinion) is attempting to liquidate her husband's assets before he dies of some illness. Her husband's lawyer calls Mr. Valdemar despite his fragile condition. Mr. Valdemar confirms from his deathbed that he is, indeed, signing over his fortune to his wife. She is then warned that if anything should happen to Mr. Valdemar in the next three weeks (the time needed to finalize the transfer) she'll have the cops on her ass.
Turns out this gal is sleep with her husband's doctor. And this doctor just happens to be a master of hypnotism. Whenever Mr. Valdemar has signed documents or talked to his lawyer, it has been under hypnotic suggestion. Whenever he is not giving away his fortune, he is kept in a hypnotic catatonic state. Well, terminally ill people tend to die and inconvenience people and Mr. Valdemar is no exception. Not wanting to deal with a police investigation, Mrs. Valdemar and the doctor hide Mr. Valdemar in a freezer in the basement.
Since Mr. Valdemar died while under hypnosis, he cannot pass on without being awoken from his hypnotic state. His between death status makes him a conduit for evil spirits to pass into our world. Mrs. Valdemar hears moaning from the corpse and is told what to do to avoid evil spirits in her house. She tries to get the doctor to stop the hypnosis but guess what? He hypnotizes himself in order to sleep at night and she can't wake him!
The next day, the corpse is still moaning so she shoots it in the face. Good luck with the police investigation. So she and the doctor concoct a plan to bury the body and run away with the money she has. But the evil spirits come and the corpse rises from the freezer and shoots Mrs. Valdemar. The doctor runs with the money. The evil spirits follow him and murder him while he sleeps.
This was a pretty good story. I did find the whole hypnosis thing kind of hard to accept. I think it was due to the quantity of hypnosis. Everything that happens is because of hypnosis. If you can accept that, then this half of the movie is not so much scary, as just a fun time. Romero is just a solid director. The story progresses well and the main characters are shown to be awful enough that their comeuppance is truly satisfying (especially the doctor's. Just watch it!)
Now Part 2:
Dario Argento directs "The Black Cat" which stars Harvey Keitel. Keitel plays a crime scene photographer named Rod. His girlfriend Annabel takes in a black cat. Annabel is kind of a hippy, pagan chick and the cat is strangely violent toward Rod (who is very much an aggressive asshole). This results in Rod strangling the cat and photographing it for a book he is releasing. Annabel finds out what he did (that's what happens when you publish photos of you murdering your girlfriend's cat) and starts plotting leaving him. Rod has a dream wherein he is executed, during Medieval times, for the death of the cat..
Rod goes to the bar and gets drunk. The bartender shows him a cat that is identical to the one he killed. He buys the cat and takes it home to kill it again. Annabel intervenes and ends up on the wrong end of a meat cleaver. Rod convinces the neighbors that everything is fine and hides Annabel in the walls. But Rod can't keep his lies straight. To make matters worse, the cat returns. Rod saws it half and throws it away. The police arrive to ask about Annabel's disappearance. They are lead by a strange mewling to Annabel's wall grave which they open with a pickaxe. But the police find that the cat has deposited a litter of kittens in the corpse and they are feeding on Annabel! Distracted by this, they are unable to defend themselves when Rod grabs the pickaxe and dispatched the officers. He tries to escape by climbing a rope from an upstairs and becomes entangled in the rope, thus hanging himself.
I preferred this part of the movie, mostly because Harvey Keitel owns his performance. The story is ok and Annabel does not inspire sympathy (I probably would've killed her without the help of booze and stress). That's really it. Harvey Keitel. All you need to know.
This was fun yet ultimately forgettable movie. Good for background on Halloween or if you're in the mood for a better than average but mindless horror movie.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
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