User Reviews

An ABC Tuesday night "Movie Of The Week", THE EYE OF CHARLES SAND is good little thriller. Upon his uncle's death, Charles Sand (PETER HASKELL) receives his inheritance. What has his uncle left him ? Aunt Alexandra (JOAN BENNETT) calls it "the sight". Charles thinks its more like a curse, but what it is is the ability to see the past, future, ghosts, and more. Sort of an ESP+. Even during his uncle's graveside service , Charles sees an apparition of a dead woman in front of the Parkhurst masoleum, and the very real Emily Parkhurst (SHARON FARRELL) running around the cemetery in a state of agitation. Charles finds a bracelet that Emily had left in the cemetery and goes to return it to her at her large family estate where she lives with older sister Katherine (BARBARA RUSH) and Katherine's husband Jeffrey Winslow (BRADFORD DILLMAN). Katherine thanks Charles for his kindness and also informs him that sister Emily " is not a well girl." Emily soon contacts Charles again and informs him that she sees her dead brother Raymond all over the place and that the apparition that Charles saw at the cemetery was of her dead ancestor Lottie. Emily has Lottie's diary and believes that she is reliving her doomed relative's tragic life. So now Charles Sand gets to solve this mystery and try to save FARRELL's sanity. There are a few spooky visions and some real scares in the climax, actually quite good for a made for tv movie. It's evident that this movie was left open ended in case ABC might decide to make this a weekly series along the lines of THE SIXTH SENSE which was on the air around that time with GARY COLLINS

I saw this originally in 1972 when it aired on TV, and I remember it scaring the living daylights out of me as a kid. Just recently purchasing it from the Warner Archive, I sat down to relive my teenage memories.

The film is about Charles Sand, a businessman who awakes from a vivid dream about his uncle, dead in his coffin, sitting up and pointing at him, with no pupils in the dead man's eyes. At the same time he is awakened by a phone call - his uncle has just died. His aunt Alexandra tells Charles that as the last living male member of the Sand family he has inherited "the sight" from his uncle. This "sight" will cause him to have visions from time to time in order to help people with some problem in their lives. It's not that Charles is a selfish or self-involved guy as much as this is not exactly a turn in his life that is welcomed. As he asks his aunt Alexandra - "Why me?".

Almost immediately he begins to have visions of a dead woman reaching out to him, of a dead man falling through a wall, and of a young woman with long red hair in a long fur coat.

It turns out that Emily Parkhurst (Sharon Farrell) of the wealthy prominent Parkhurst family is the red headed woman in trouble. She believes her brother is dead, and she says she continually sees visions of him, covered in blood. Now this is the part of the film that lost about one star from my rating. As Emily, Sharon Farrell is doing a most irritating Mod Squad version of Ophelia through about half of this movie. Nobody will take her seriously and from her behavior it is not hard to figure out why this is so. When Charles Sand gets involved, Emily's older sister tells Sand that the brother is in London and has written and called Emily several times since she claimed he was dead, but she just hangs on to her belief in his death beyond all reason. So now Sand is not only having to deal with doubts about his new gift, but doubts that the first person he has encountered since receiving this second sight is in trouble at all versus just being crazy.

The last ten minutes or so are very suspenseful and worth putting up with Ms. Farrell's over-the-top performance. I'd recommend it especially if you liked the old made for TV movies of the 70's.

Just one more thing. I really was scratching my head at first in response to the detached performance Joan Bennett gave as Charles' widowed aunt Alexandria when talking to Charles about his new found gift and the uncle's death. But then I realized it probably just fit in with what she already knew and what Charles' uncle wrote to him in the letter describing his new sixth sense "Neither man of God nor man of science can help you now. You are alone."

I watched this when I was around 12 or 13 and it's the only horror movie that I've ever switched off because I was too afraid to watch it alone.

I want to watch it again; not because I'm particularly braver now, but I have a girlfriend who I can cuddle up to if I need to gibber and bite my fingers down to the knuckles.

Seriously, I'm not easily scared but this film nearly made me crap myself when I watched it. Maybe it'd be different now; I don't know. All I do know is that it's the most terrifying film that I've ever seen, even if that does come from the perspective of someone who only saw it as a kid.

I remember watching this as a pre-teen and thinking it was totally cool. As a fond childhood memory, I ordered it on DVD recently when I found it at a good discount.

The concept is as cool as I remembered, but from an adult's viewpoint it has lots of flaws. The hysterics of both the female leads are way over the top. There are some fairly blatant continuity errors and visible film crew mistakes.

Also, do the fabulously wealthy really live in high-rise apartments where the elevator opens directly into their living room? And do the fabulously wealthy live in mansions without any security, then invite strangers in for coffee without knowing who they are?

When Charles Sand opened the coffin, at the beginning, of the movie, a frightening sight was about to begin. His deceased uncle opened his eyes and there were no eye balls. Just the whites. Then he raised up and pointed his finger at Charles. This would give you the creeps. If this happened, in a funeral parlor, there would be an evacuation.

This movie's greatest attributes are a few creepy moments, especially in the first part of the movie, and Bradford Dillman, who elevated everything he was in. It isn't as effective as other TV horror flicks from that era, such as The Night Stalker, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Horror at 30,000 Feet, The Norliss Tapes, and so on; but it's well worth a viewing or buying for 10 bucks on Amazon for fans of this particular subset of horror movies.

I too saw the very beginning of this movie and it scared the hell out of me. Something about him (Charles Sand) seeing that dead lady in the cemetery, I mean this lady really looked dead. I was just a kid at the time and I will never forget it. I'll never forget the white eyes of that dead old lady. God that was scary for a kid to see!!

There was a eerie musical score too. It sounded something like running your finger across a piano keyboard from high scale to low. I just typed "The eyes of charles sand" into Alta Vista and I was lead here. Thank gop for search engines. I want to find this movie and see it now so I can convince myself it's not all that scary as I remember it from the mind of a child. That's why I gave it a 9!!!

ESP-themed TV movie stars Peter Haskell as stockbroker Charles Sand, who learns upon his uncle's death that he has inherited "The Sight", a family gift/curse that enables him to have psychic visions that he must use to help those in need. No sooner is his uncle buried that a disturbed young woman(played by Sharon Farrell) needs his help to investigate whether her brother Raymond is alive or not, and what part her sister(played by Barbara Rush) and brother-in-law(played by Bradford Dillman) play in the mystery... Uneven thriller is both low-key and over-the-top, with decidedly mixed results. Some good visuals and jump-scares though. A proposed TV series pilot that never happened.

I was 10 years old in 1972, and absolutely fascinated by the occult/horror genre. As a faithful viewer of the TV series "Dark Shadows", "The Sixth Sense" and "Night Gallery", I was quite used to watching stories about ghosts, vampires, werewolves and the like. But nothing had prepared me for the night I accidentally tuned in to this Movie Of The Week. Those first couple of scenes featuring the dead guy with only the whites of his eyes scared me more than anything I'd ever seen. I honestly don't remember much else about this movie—I may not even have watched all of it. But still today, more than 30 years later, I get goosebumps just thinking about those scary white eyes!

I saw this movie when I was 8 and I think it was on around the same time that the screaming woman was on. I always remembered those two movies and could never get them out of my mind. This one as well as the screaming woman scared the living daylights out of me. If only they made thrillers as good as this for the big screen. I have been looking for this one as well as The screaming woman forever. Can anyone out there tell me if they have a copy of this?

Now that we have DVD technology I suppose that the studio that owns the rights to it needs enough of a demand to put it on DVD, but as in the case of the Screaming woman I suppose that there are some cable stations looking for content that have shown this. Has anyone out there taped it?

Another TV movie that was an intended pilot for a series. Falling short of the "keeper" mark in terms of what the networks craved at the time, "Charles" still contains a wonderfully restrained performance by the dependable Peter Haskell as the titular hero, an inheritor of powers of ESP and clairvoyance that runs in the family. Of course, on the other hand, you have Sharon Farrell as a young woman whose either going insane (something she excelled at playing) or who definitely needs Charles' supernatural help. Add Barbara Rush and Joan Bennett into the mix, and you either have a campy hoot-fest of OTT emoting, or something so irritating, you may turn away and actually watch that rerun of DUMB AND DUMBER for the twenty-sixth time.

What saves it ultimately is capable direction, a storyline that does keep things interesting, (not to mention pre-dating Stephen King's THE DEAD ZONE by over a decade, which contains some striking similarities), and some frighteningly taut setpieces that, though dated, still work to some extent if you watch it with the lights out.

Hard to find, but worth it when you do, if only for sentimental reasons, (like when they used to make REALLY good or at least entertaining 90-minute TV extravaganzas.)