EYEBALL (1975) Blu-ray Review

Eyeball (1975) d. Umberto Lenzi (Italy/Spain) (100 min)

A group of American tourists seeing the sight of Barcelona are targeted by a red-gloved killer with a penchant for slashing and dashing and tarrying only long enough to puncture the victim’s left eye as a calling card. With a literal busload of suspects and a cranky veteran cop (retiring in a week) on the case, this is an admirably energetic and playful entry in the giallo sweepstakes, one of the last entries of the Italian heyday and Lenzi’s final effort in the subgenre.

THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955) Blu-ray Review

The Quatermass Xperiment (aka The Creeping Unknown) (1955) d. Val Guest (UK) (82 min)

After Professor Quatermass’ (Brian Donlevy) experimental Q1 rocket crashes in a field in the English countryside, it is discovered that two of the crew have vanished and the third, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), is catatonic and undergoing inexplicable metabolic changes (or “meTABolic,” as Donlevy pronounces it). Dismissing all other concerns, Quatermass searches for answers to uncover the scientific truths, while Dr. Gordon Briscoe (David King-Wood) and Carroon’s wife Judith (Margia Dean) attempt to help her mutating husband.

DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE (1980) Blu-ray Review

Don’t Go in the House (1980) d. Joseph Ellison (USA) (92 min)

Lonely misfit city worker Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) suffers the one-two punch of witnessing a co-worker engulfed in flame after an aerosol can explodes in the incinerator and then coming home to discover his overbearing mother has kicked the bucket sitting in her easy chair. This pair of traumatizing events apparently fry the last circuit in Donny’s brain, because he immediately starts hearing disembodied voices, instructing him to remedy the “evil” in the world, which he interprets as “build a steel-plated furnace room in the basement, purchase an asbestos fire suit and flamethrower, and start luring unsuspecting females into your new DIY BBQ palace.”