The mighty Shaw Brothers sets its sights on a chilling urban tale by Chen Yun-wen and directed by the late Kwei Chih-hung (THE TEA HOUSE, THE KILLER SNAKES). GHOST EYES concerns a female hair stylist (Chen Szu-chia) who is seduced by the vampiric ghost of a former optometrist (Szu Wei). Using supernatural contact lenses to control her mind, he gradually drains her life essence as she is forced to find new victims until tries to make a stand and rid herself of this terror once and for all.

Although poorly executed at times, GHOST EYES benefits from a creative story that puts a new twist on the period ghost stories of Pu Song-ling that we have since seen adapted to screen in films like A CHINESE GHOST STORY and PAINTED SKIN (2008). In those stories, women are usually the ghosts or fox spirits luring young traveling scholars to their doom. Where Pu’s works are ultimately more supernatural romances, GHOST EYES is firmly rooted in the fatalistic horror conventions of grindhouse cinema.

Looking and acting somewhat like an Asian Frank Langella from DRACULA (1979), Szu Wei, a virtuosic pianist-turned-actor in his big-screen debut, is a handsome and charming monster who lures Chen into a downward-spiraling situation that could easily be used as a metaphor for unhealthy modern situations like drug abuse, casual sex and emotional abuse. Chen finds him alluring at first and enjoys several nights of passionate lovemaking. Yet each time, she wakes up alone in an abandoned building with hazy memories of the night before and looking progressively more pale and gaunt. Sound familiar? I hope not. This chance to make a statement about the perils of sliding down the slippery slope of modern society is largely wasted. After all, this is a Shaw Brothers movie and that means nuance and social commentary are at the bottom of a priority list topped by making quick profits.

Kwei Chih-hung had already proven himself to be a moderately capable director of modern horror with THE KILLER SNAKES, a Chinese version of WILLARD. Like that film, GHOST EYES enjoys the awareness and ability to paint contemporary working-class society in Hong Kong that Kwei previous focused more squarely on in THE TEA HOUSE and THE DELINQUENT.

For modern horror to work, it is vital that audiences connect with the victims. The more normal and real their environment looks, the better the reception will be to the terror that is introduced to it. At least, that’s how it works in theory. Kwei succeeds in some areas and fails in others. The incidental characters we see acting naturally in Chen’s beauty salon or in a home that she calls when desperately asking for her friend to help effectively add the real-world context needed to accept that a monster could be lurking amongst us. Kwei even makes this suggestion in a wink to the audience when a Taoist priest (Wang Ching-ho) is brought in and states that ghosts do walk among us and may even be the person sitting behind us in the movie theater.

The production design is very uneven. Many of the real-world locations and interior sets look great. Limited make up effects and brief gore are adequate and at least equal to Hammer Films standards. Then you have shots that absolutely destroy the moment, none worse being a rubber spider close-up where we can actually see the wire being used to make it jiggle on its fake web. What is such a shame here is that the shot was entirely unnecessary. There is also some iffy colored spotlight use. SB’s production team frequently used colored lights in wuxia films as a cheap way to show special effects or redress sets.

Something else that detracts from the film is some of the camera work that fails to get the most out of a scene. A few shots are brilliantly constructed but others feel rushed and careless.

The soundtrack is simply a disaster. Stock music is used and some of it could have been effective had it been applied with any understanding of horror convention at all. The bad timing and overuse of “gotcha” riffs make many scenes unintentionally amusing. Chen Yung-yu really should have been required to watch Hitchcock’s PSYCHO a few times to get a clue.

Ultimately, what makes GHOST EYES passable entertainment is the plot. It starts out weak but gradually gets more interesting and less predictable at time goes on. My big concern was that once a Taoist priest shows up, somehow the film would end up an actioner or comedy. I obviously have been conditioned by too many films like MR. VAMPIRE and SPOOKY ENCOUNTERS. Although they didn’t exist in 1974 it’s hard to look past them today. Thankfully, Kwei finds a way to deal with the Taoist versus ghost scene in a way that keeps the film rooted in horror.

There are plenty of mistakes made in this movie which should come as no surprise. The Hong Kong film industry has never been a serious competitor when it comes to the horror genre and GHOST EYES reveals the lack of understanding that Shaw Brothers had in 1974, despite Kwei Chih-hung gradually becoming one of the territory’s leading makers of horror films. Even his best horror films, such as BEWITCHED and THE BOXER’S OMEN tended to be more bizarre than terrifying. Look overseas and you’ll find far superior gems from 1974 like DEAD OF NIGHT, BLACK CHRISTMAS and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE that continue to scare audiences to this day.

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