I Only Have Eyes For You
Top Ten Ocular Horror Movie Moments
The horror genre certainly has no shortage of gut-churning gore and violently drawn viscera. From slashers to the psychological scares, once the blood has been spilled, all bets are off. And one, err two…of the first things to go are the eyes. Those babies have been sliced, plucked, gorged, telepathically vaporized, and more—all in the name of horror entertainment. When it comes to ocular trauma, this list is something to truly feast your eyes on.
10) THE TERMINATOR (1984)
Okay, okay. It’s a sci-fi/action movie if we’re being technical. But. If you consider the stalking, the relentless pursuit, the terror of an unstoppable cyborg killer—THE TERMINATOR has shades of slasher-horror. And speaking of shades, the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) needed a pair of them to disguise some pretty gnarly eye damage. In a practical feat from Stan Winston, the Terminator performs self-surgery with a precision blade, slicing out the false eye and revealing the glowing red optical tech beneath. The end result? A pair of badass shades that ultimately helps define the look of the Terminator T-800 model throughout the entire franchise.
9) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
It’s a dystopian set future. It’s a crime film. And, as main character Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) and his clan of droogs gleefully commit acts of unspeakable “ultra-violence,” viewers are subjected to the horrors of disconnected youth, cultural malaise, and ultimately a test of morality. What solidifies the horror element is in the “rehabilitation” Alex receives during his eventual imprisonment for rape and murder. The “Ludovico Technique” sees Alex strapped down, eyes clamped wide while forced to watch on-screen violence paired with his beloved Beethoven scoring the scenes. The aversion therapy is at the heart of the argument surrounding forced psychological attrition as a “cure.". And Malcolm McDowell’s unblinking eyes and shrieks of terror cement A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in this writer’s ocular horror catalogue.
8) HORROR EXPRESS (1972)
In this Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing pairing, a Trans-Siberian train is on the fast track to terror when a mysterious humanoid creature in the cargo defrosts from its primitive slumber. Is it the “missing link” in human evolution? Is it Satan made manifest? Is it some kind of zombie ape? These are the floating theories by the scientists in the story. But no, it’s a long-frozen alien intelligence with glowing red eyes that drains the knowledge and lived experiences of its victims, essentially hard-boiling their retinas in the process. Its survival is dependent on darkness, with the aim to attain knowledge on how to assemble a new spacecraft. But the big takeaway from HORROR EXPRESS? A veritable buffet of freaky eye terror.
7) EVENT HORIZON (1997)
My oh my, Paul Anderson got gory with this one. EVENT HORIZON, aka “Hellraiser In Space” is the ill-fated ship that vanished without a trace seven years prior following an attempt at bending space-time with its “gravity drive.” When it came back, it brought some of Hell with it—A foreboding Latin warning, the infamous murder-orgy, and a whole lotta eye trauma. While each of the crew members are plagued by their own personal torment, Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), the designer of Event Horizon, suffers recurring visions of his eyeless dead wife. He eventually succumbs to madness and gouges his own eyes, then tries to take the crew right back to the hell-dimension from whence the ship came. And why not? Because where they’re going “they won’t need eyes to see.”
6) 28 DAYS LATER (2002)
Bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes from a coma to find the release of a lab-grown rage virus has ravaged society to its downfall. He finds other survivors and together they decide to follow a radio broadcast promising military protection and the cure to the infection. But when they arrive, the celebratory mood takes a dark turn as squadron leader’s “answer to infection” is the rape and forced procreation of female survivors lured into their promise of sanctuary. When Jim protests he is left for dead but returns to rescue his female companions. And the mild-mannered Englishman is gone as Jim goes thumbs-deep into the orbital sockets of one of the would-be rapists. His love interest, Selena (Naomie Harris) is so startled by the brutality that she thinks Jim has been infected. Fortunately, it was just a satisfyingly gory display of comeuppance.
5) TALK TO ME (2022)
Directing sibling duo Danny and Michael Philippou conjured up possibly the grimmest party movie of all time with the debut of TALK TO ME. Still grieving the loss of her mother, teenage loner Mia (Sophie Wilde) is drawn to a disturbing game of summoning and possession when a high school party introduces her to the dark power a severed embalmed hand. Open the door to the other side with a lit candle, grip the hand and say “talk to me” and a ghost appears. Say “I let you in,” and the real fun begins in a frantic 90-second possession. But when Mia lets her best friend’s little brother take a turn, the fun and games turn violent. Young Riley (Joe Bird) repeatedly slams his head into the table, then grabs and nearly pulls out his right eyeball. It’s such a quick turn in the story that viewers are just as stunned as the on-screen partygoers, proving that kids are in fact fair game for horror movie violence…even eye trauma.
4) SCANNERS (1981)
David Cronenberg’s seminal sci-fi/horror is known by cinema gorehounds for one scene in specific: the telepathically exploding head, of course. And it was an incredible feat in practical effects indeed. But the climactic psych battle—between rebel scanner Darryl Revok (the always enigmatic Michael Ironside) and Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), the newly-discovered scanner sent to stop him—should not be overlooked.Veins bulge, inflate, and burst. Skin melts. Eyes distenigrate. And in a shocking battle of wills, Vale’s piercing blue eyes in Revok’s head reveal that he was the victor, psychically transferring his consciousness from his obliterated body into his opponent’s. Now that’s how you end a body-horror!
3) RINGU (1998)
The tattered white dress, the dark hair dripping wet over the face, the disjointed walk. You know this ghost, and likely many iterations since. Sadako Yamamura first hit the screen in this horror-mystery as the dead girl at the center of a mysterious cursed videotape. In this vengeful ghost story, determined parents of a young child who watched the tape discover Sadako’s decomposed body at the bottom of the well, believing they lifted the curse. But Sadako is still not satisfied. Her intention wasn’t to stop the curse, but to spread it. And the only way to be spared was to copy her videotape and show it to someone else. So when Ryūji (Hiroyuki Sanada) is resting after recovering the accursed body, he certainly wasn’t expecting a still-vengeful Sadako to come crawling through his TV. And all it takes to kill is seeing her face—peeking through the parted hair, the glare of a single malformed eye. It’s not gruesome, but it’s effectively etched into the annals of horror history.
2) ZOMBIE (1979)
aka ZOMBI 2, aka LUCIO FULCI’S ZOMBIE, aka ZOMBIE FLESH-EATERS
Lucio Fulci’s vision for the undead was an unflinching gorefest with reanimated wormy voodoo victims on a secluded Caribbean island. Dr. David Menard (Richard Johnson) is researching the phenomenon, while his wild-eyed wife, Paola (Olga Karlatos) is panicking and wants to evacuate pronto. When she’s left alone one evening a zombie comes calling. And after a prolonged struggle barricading a rickety wooden door, the zombie intruder breaks through and pulls poor Paola right into one whopper of a splinter…eye first. The majority of the struggle is shot in profile, so viewers can see the splinter first squish against the gelatinous surface of her eye. Then as she’s pulled further and further you really see the depths of the injury. That wood just went all the way in there. Such a gross-out death scene. And this is mere minutes after the infamous zombie-shark battle on the ocean floor. ZOMBIE is a gift that just keeps giving.
1) UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929)
“Il était une fois…” there was a short silent film so provocative, so shocking…that the French elite whose sensibilities it was subliminally criticizing were naturally enraptured enough to finance a sequel. Imagine that! UN CHIEN ANDALOU (An Andalusian Dog) was a dream-logic passion project from director/producer/editor Luis Buñuel, co-written with surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. And at 01:40 seconds into the film, a straight razor slices across the eyeball of its leading lady. What follows is an exercise in anti-narrative, a Freudian-heavy series of juxtaposed imagery. Buñuel and Dalí crafted 21 minutes of avant-garde film that would be studied by the cinematically-minded for nearly a century. This means that it is entirely likely that silent film star Simone Mareuil has the most watched eye trauma in all of film history—though it was actually a dead calf’s eye that took the damage.
