Two Evil Eyes

1991 "When I Wake You... You'll Be Dead."
6.1| 2h0m| R| en| More Info
Released: 25 October 1991 Released
Producted By: Gruppo Bema
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A duo of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations about a greedy wife's attempt to embezzle her dying husband's fortune, and a sleazy reporter's adoption of a strange black cat.

Genre

Horror

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Two Evil Eyes (1991) is now streaming with subscription on AMC+

Director

George A. Romero, Dario Argento

Production Companies

Gruppo Bema

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Two Evil Eyes Audience Reviews

Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!
WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
jadavix "Two Evil Eyes" is a compilation of two horror shorts that take different approaches to two familiar ideas, without the greatest of results.The first segment, directed by George A. Romero, is the old "evil people kill guy, dead guy comes back for revenge, the end" story he did in one of the Creepshow movies. It also featured in a "Tales From the Crypt" episode about a black mortician.I always found these types of stories annoyingly underdone and unfinished. It's like a start and an end, but no middle. There is never an attempt to explain the hows and whys of the spectral appearance. Not that everything needs an explanation, but these stories just need something more. I find them really lazy.This time, Romero (after "Creepshow") does try for more, but in a weirdly noncommittal manner that doesn't come to anything. When the guy is supposed to be dead, frozen in an ice chest by his gold digging wife and doctor, he apparently speaks to them from beyond the grave about ghosts he has met on the other side. His mouth doesn't move, we just hear the voice. The gold-diggers make sure he's dead with a more forthright execution, and THEN he comes back, muttering something about how the ghosts on the other side are trying to take over his body. I believe he gets put down for a third time, but then spectral shapes circle around the doctor's bed, and it's time for the next short movie.The whole concept of the dead man encountering resistance on the other side, and they are the ones who precipitate his zombification, had promise to create something markedly different than the bog-standard story outline I described above. Romero's heart didn't seem to be in it, though, or perhaps he just wasn't the man for the job. His horrors, whatever they are, are of THIS world, with generally a real world evil either at fault, or as a backdrop. He isn't interested in the world beyond the veil. The dead man communicating to his killers needed to be handled in a much more engaging way than him merely talking without talking. A particularly shocking dream sequence, for example, could have been a better way of communicating the terrifying unreality of someone being dead, but not quite dead enough.The second segment was better, though not by much. The handling wasn't quite as pedestrian, but nevertheless was fairly confusing. Argento's raison d'etre is the giallo genre; ultra-violent murder whodunits with red herrings, multiple suspects, heroes caught on the wrong side of the law. You generally lose track of the finer details of the plot, but this can work as it conveys the depths of the mystery the hero is stuck in. If you're having a hard time with the details, how must they be getting on?For a more straightforward horror story like "The Black Cat", however, it's more of an annoyance that the story doesn't seem anchored to anything; even Keitel's performance is a bit all over the place. The tale of a man apparently driven insane by an unkillable black cat, Keitel's typical gory, POV-shot murder of his wife (this is Argento, after all) didn't feel necessary to the story, of explicable based on what came before. After that we descend into the usual clichés of a man trying to cover up murder while neighbours and students call his house. He didn't seem crazy enough. The detail of the cat having a patch of fur in the shape of a gallows is the kind of literary point that only works on paper - like the dead guy talking without moving his mouth in the first story. The filmmakers needed to find better cinematic ways of showing these things, and showing how these things affected the characters.Without the stories on hand, the effect was really any one's guess, but I can only assume we would've got it if we'd read, rather than watched them.
TheRedDeath30 On the surface, this would seem like a horror fan's wet dream. Two of horror's most celebrated directors, George Romero and Dario Argento, in a pseudo-anthology film, dedicated to the works of American legend, E.A. Poe. The reality, however, is that the film has its' shining moments, but the negatives outweighed the positives for me.Most of us have some passing familiarity with Poe's work, maybe you've read it in grade school, or maybe you're more familiar with the Corman adaptations from the 60s. He is considered to be the father of American horror, as well as the inventor of the detective story. His work has been used as a launching point for many horror films and here they attempt to adapt his work somewhat faithfully, though with plenty of additions and embellishments. The stories were originally created for a proposed television series. Unfortunately it was abandoned with only two episodes and, thus, we get the two one-hour segments shown here. The fact that they were created for the small screen is one of the biggest drawbacks to the film. Romero's segment, especially, just reeks of low budget and bad production values. The first story is THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M VALDEMAR done by Romero. It utilizes some of the weakest parts of the Poe oeuvre, in my opinion. It's very indicative of the sort of "detective fiction" that was crafted by Poe letting a plot VERY slowly unwind and, also, shows his preoccupation with the mysticism and hypnotism so popular at the time. The problem is that all the tension that he tries to build just goes nowhere and never provides a satisfying resolution. Maybe I'm just too jaded, but a guy laying frozen with a disembodied voice just doesn't elicit many chills for me. Of course, being Romero, he uses the story as an excuse to comment on capitalism and drag out one of his trademark zombies. The second story is THE BLACK CAT by Argento, which is really a strange melange of several Poe stories, including THE CASK OF AMONTIDALLO. It stars Harvey Keitel a few years before his Tarantino-fueled resurgence. The story has a few of the best elements of Argento's work, including some gorgeous looking crime scenes. Unfortunately, it has some of the worst elements of his work, as well, namely an odd, meandering plot and a bad male lead character that is hard for anyone to relate to because I've never met one person who acted remotely like him. Both directors were about five years past their prime, at this point, and do a serviceable job of translating stories that are now over a hundred years old, to make them more modern. I found the Argento segment to be much better than the Romero, but neither one would even have made a very good episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, let alone an entertaining horror film.
teodeceglie I was sure to find the usual negative for the classic'80s horror film. This site is safe meet in negative judgement on a horror film. All horro movies suck, we do not save one, is crazy. Detestate: prom night, Creepshow, society exception etc. The film is very nice. A good comedy horror 80 years, beautiful women, good special effects for the time, we are just irony and the classic'80s horror film. This film in Italy was also known as the home of Helen. A good film for the period. Go now to see the crimes of black cat and I am sure that meet a new negative judgement. Next time to you when you remember that the horror film on the site are all rejected.
Michael O'Keefe Two adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe's dark tales. Two famed directors and recognizable stars. I was real eager to view TWO EVIL EYES, but it didn't take all that long and I was bored to death. Not enough action; not enough gore. George Romero directs THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR, where a deceitful cheating wife(Adrienne Barbeau)plans on killing her husband(E.G. Marshall); and while he is in a vegetated state, she cashes in some of his major assets. Even a fully clothed Barbeau is gorgeous.THE BLACK CAT is directed by Derio Argento and tells the tale of a crime photographer(Harvey Keitel), who is haunted by cats after himself being involved with a murder. Keitel,who is known for playing some quirky roles, does not disappoint.Other stars involved in these twin tales: Sally Kirland, John Amos, Kim Hunter, Martin Balsam and Ramy Zada.