Two Evil Eyes (Blu-Ray) - Reviewed By Wes Vance
Released:March 31st, 2009
Directed by:George A. Romero and Dario Argento
Released by: Blue Underground, Inc.
MOVIE: 2 and a half out of 5 skulls
TRANSFER: 3 out of 5 skulls
AUDIO: 3 out of 5 skulls
EXTRAS: 4 out of 5 skulls
George A. Romero and Dario Argento began their working relationship with 1978’s Dawn of the Dead. A film which Argento produced along side Romero and Richard Rubinstein. The two remained friends and ultimately decided to make an anthology style film in 1990 known as ‘Two Evil Eyes’. The oddity of it all is an anthology film should have at least three or more stories, and originally it did. The original idea was to have Romero and Argento along with Wes Craven and John Carpenter to team up and create the ultimate horror anthology, based on the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. What we ended up with was a two part pseudo-anthology that was barely seen when it was released. ‘Due occhi diabolici’ was released in early 1990 in Italy and didn’t come stateside until nearly two years later to an extremely limited theatrical run. Thanks to the folks at Blue Underground however, we not only have ‘Two Evil Eyes’ on dvd but now the ultimate home video format…Blu-Ray. Lets have a look!
The first half of ‘Two Evil Eyes’ is George Romero’s ‘The Facts In The Case of Mr. Valdemar’. Jessica Valdemar (Adrienne Barbeau) plays the role of a conniving wife out to get a payday from her dying husband Ernest (Bingo O’Malley) and with the help of her lover Dr. Robert Hoffman (Ramy Zada) putting a trance on him, he will say and do whatever they want. However when Ernest unexpectedly dies the trance induced spirit lives on to haunt the dastardly duo for the rest of their days. Argento’s chapter follows Roderick Usher (Harvey Keitel) who’s a police crime scene photographer with a deep hatred for felines, when his wife adopts a new black cat this pushes his alcoholic rages into violent attacks on not only the cat itself but his wife. As we all know however cats have nine lives…and ultimately in this case the last laugh!
This movie on paper looks really good, and you’d never think a movie directed and written by George A. Romero and Dario Argento would be bad…but it really is. It’s not unwatchable by any means but it’s more than a little disappointing, and doesn’t live up to the names behind it. The better of the two stories is Argento’s ‘Black Cat’ which has been made into a movie so many times it makes all of the King Kong remakes look tame in comparison. Unfortunately the only shining star of this film is Tom Savini and his amazing effects work. Ultimately this movie is too slow and uninteresting for me…I felt this way when I first saw the film on dvd and years later on Blu-Ray.
Blue Underground brings us ‘Two Evil Eyes’ featuring a 1.78:1 HD transfer that in my eyes isn’t a vast improvement from the DVD counterpart. Honestly though, a movie such as this wouldn’t benefit as much since it was a really low budget film when it came out and didn’t have many visual scenes that would wow you to begin with. The audio features again both the 7.1 DTS HD and 7.1 Dolby Digital True HD along with a SD 5.1 Dolby EX track, I give BU the props on the audio department. Not too many companies feature all of these on one disc. The extras featured in this B-D are in standard def and are direct ports from the 2003 2-disc DVD edition, they include: ‘Two Masters Eyes’ Interviews with Argento, Romero, Tom Savini, Claudio Argento and Asia Argento which runs 30 minutes, Behind the scenes look at the Special Makeup Effects with Tom Savini, A Personal Tour of Tom Savini’s Home, Interview with star Adrienne Barbeau and Theatrical Trailer!
Final Thoughts
I know that ‘Two Evil Eyes’ has it’s fans, but I’m not one of them. Most of the time I love anthology horror but ‘Two Evil Eyes’ didn’t do it for me. This Blu-Ray Edition is nice, but only for those that don’t already have the DVD edition. The picture quality is an improvement over the DVD, but not a vast one. In the end I can only recommend this for a rental then you be the judge on whether or not you’ll purchase it!
Recommended For Rental Only!
Reviewed By: Wes Vance