Eyes of Fire (1983)

January 22, 2022 5:59 PM

A preacher is accused of adultery and he and his followers are chased out of town and become stranded in an isolated forest which is haunted by the spirits of long dead Native Americans.

Freshly restored by Severin Films after a long period of being unavailable. Currently streaming in the US on Shudder.

posted by DirtyOldTown (5 comments total)

This is fantastic. So many striking and cool effects made with no budget. I really wish this director had gotten a chance to work with a bigger budget.

The only effect that really looks like shit is Jewell's beard.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:27 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fun factoid: Jewell is played by Rob Paulsen, aka Yakko Warner. Sister is played by the old lady from a famous Hungry Jack commercial you would never remember unless you are also an old.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:36 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

What a strange, good film. I love that it doesn't spell out the relationships or webs of power (Irish vs. English, settlers vs. Natives), but it does show them, and if we pay attention, we understand. It also doesn't spell out what's going on magically, and I'm...not sure that we ever can understand that totally, but that's okay.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:58 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fun factoid: Jewell is played by Rob Paulsen, aka Yakko Warner.

That must have been a hard name to have when Fight Club came out.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:02 AM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

I found the plot of this to be borderline incoherent - it's just a bunch of stuff that happens, without really offering explanations or much in the way of character motivations - but the mood was outstanding. Someone in the recent folk-horror documentary made an interesting point about this movie, that the fear of a failed colony is a kind of primal American feeling at the root of American folk-horror stories, and you can definitely get that vibe from this movie (and The Witch, which seems like an obvious descendant of it in retrospect).
posted by whir at 11:29 AM on March 18, 2022