Bedroom Eyes (1984) Poster

(1984)

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4/10
bad Hitchcock, but pretty good Lantos
jonathan-57726 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Having established his admiration for the master with the Psycho-for-Dummies of "Funeral Home", here Fruet serves up Rear Window with a dash of Spellbound: jogging voyeur Kenneth Gilman falls in with comely psychiatrist Dayle Haddon, before his kink gets him caught up in all kinds of shady intrigue. Needless to say, the film doesn't benefit from the comparison. It's frustrating how they keep pulling us out of the characters' point of view with cheat flashbacks or overdoses of stupid detective, and the pacing and cinematography are both damagingly pedestrian. By the more, er, modest yardstick of Robert Lantos sex schlock, however, it succeeds pretty well; at times the voyeurism theme actually feels like something more than an excuse to show pretty women undressing, and Gilman and Haddon are genuinely appealing and show genuine chemistry. So it's almost tragic that the filmmakers had to boil it all down to a murderous ex-hooker who thinks that "all men are pimps" - not just a stupid device, but a shamefully irrelevant one, unless of course they're working a moral angle, something along the lines of 'being a deviant will get you killed,' which I could also live without.
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4/10
Contrived
gridoon25 August 2001
Made and acted (amateurishly) by unknowns, this bland thriller sets up its contrived main situation right from the opening sequence - and then goes nowhere you haven't been before (voyeurism, murder, the wrong man suspected, etc). All-too-obviously (and all-too-intentionally) reminiscent of "Rear Window", but there's just no comparison. (**)
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A Peeping Tom peeks into a dark world where he is being watched.
aclav2 December 2001
This film appears to be an after dark type of cable movie but has more to offer. It's a good rental if you want to escape to a world that exist in your town maybe even in your neighborhood that you would never be a part of. Unless you are up all night looking out the window at your neighbors.
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3/10
Cinemax giallo
BandSAboutMovies10 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
If you enjoy Canadian horror, then you know who William Fruet is, the maker of Death Weekend (released here as The House By the Lake), Cries In the Night (better known as Funeral Home), redneck rampage film Trapped (AKA Baker County U. S. A.), Spasms and the kinda-sorta Alien by way of animal experimentation oddity Blue Monkey.

This time, he's taking on the genre of adult thriller, which by 1984 is kind of what giallo was leaning toward and then would completely become in the wake of Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. The ideas are the same - identity, secrets, sex, shame, violence - but it's missing the great music and the fashion for the most part.

If you're nostalgic for a film that aired on USA Up All Night, this movie is for you. This is the type of universe where a peeping tom is the hero, where a psychologist can see past his perversion - or encourage it - to see the man he is inside and where every other woman is evil.

This was, of course, followed by Bedroom Eyes II, which is way better because it has Wings Hauser, Veronica Hart and Linda Blair in the cast, as well as Chuck Vincent directing, and that movie also has no compunctions about feeling sweaty and filthy while this one seems clean and wrapped up, like some of the 80s felt.

This one does gets points for having its female antagonist repeatedly beat the protagonist up, including a slapstick bonk at the end as the police take her away.
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2/10
Highly Generic, And Lacking In Narrative Force, Resulting In An Essentially Clumsy And Dispirited Work.
rsoonsa29 November 2013
This is a rather unpleasant and needlessly protracted suspenser wherein is to be found emphasis only upon sex instead of suspense. An attempt is made by director William Fruet to give a light tone to the film, but a surfeit of coarsened humour operates against the plot line from its inception. Stockbroker Harry Ross (Kenneth Gilman), following completion of his customary evening jogging session in Toronto, is seized by a voyeuristic urge to peek into an open window of a residence, at which time he observes a type of fetishistic sexual activity that may best be described as drab, but apparently of more than adequate interest for Ross to prod him into additional viewing during the following evening. On display for him during this follow-up observation is a probable murder although such an event is bereft of any details for Ross's excitable narration to his newly-established confidante, an attractive female psychiatrist, Alixe Barnes (Dayle Haddon). Meanwhile, a zealous crew of police detectives is searching after a suspect for the now confirmed killing, and their efforts give Ross no end of displeasure, since he was, after all, involved solely as a peeping tom. As the forces of law and order are floundering, they spend a great deal of time trailing the frightened Ross. Alixe tries to hypnotise Harry to determine the extent of his involvement, since she supports him as an innocent and believes that through hypnosis he can overcome the drawback of not having a credible reason for peering through the concerned window. A poorly constructed script infects a cast led by an ungainly Gilman whose acting range here is not devolved beyond an ever-present deer in headlamps appearance. Director Fruet has done much better work than this piece, in particular as a scenarist, but there is very little imaginative feeling to this film that can be recommended only if one has absolutely nothing else to view. Oddly, the work developed a following that eventually led to a sequel which, in any case, was not able to provide much of a successor plot or a form that could improve upon this silly movie.
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7/10
Actually good!
Tito-87 December 1998
Don't be fooled by the title, for this isn't another piece of direct-to-video sleaze. What you will find instead is a fun, fast-moving film that is admittedly silly, but so what? It's no classic to be sure, and certainly there are few (if any) surprises, but it's a fun movie that tries for laughs instead of thrills, and works as a result. Open your mind, and give "Bedroom Eyes" a look.
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Six years since the last comment!
FeverDog22 October 2007
This is one of those movies I taped off late-night HBO back in the day. I dunno, it was really adult and sexy when I was in junior high.

Let's see, there was a cigarette butt in the shrubbery, fingerprints on a window, right? Set in Ontario it was, with a woman in red taking her panties off in a restaurant so her guy could give her a foot job under the table? And that guy was a jogger who threw out his sneakers after stepping in dog crap? Was that this movie? One of those with the blonde/brunette dichotomy? Would love to see it again sometime.

This one lingers in my memory for some reason. It wasn't direct to video, since I definitely remember playing a nearby theater in '86, '87...or '88? This one theater (Budco/AMC Millside 3/4 in Delran, NJ) would often play random movie no other place would (THE DRIFTER, DOLLS and DEMONS cameoed there too, but not ANGUISH or BARFLY - they went to the AMC Marlton). No point, just filling up the 10-line minimum...
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