Now I know that the eighties spawned a nearly immeasurable amount of dumb and low-budgeted horror movies, and that it's practically impossible to have seen them all, but still I'm somewhat surprised that this particular one never caught my attention before. I'm a tremendous fan of the genre, the decade and particularly anthologies, and the list of '80s anthologies isn't that enormous after all. Considering the fact that I've struggled myself through some truly bad ones that are less obscure, like for example "Shock Chamber", I had very little hopes that this "Terror Eyes" would be worth checking out, but my second pleasant surprise was that I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. "Terror Eyes" is an incredibly cheap and amateurish, but the lack of professionalism is widely compensated by the spirited acting performances, the ingenious wraparound story and – most of all – the astoundingly clever short stories. The segments are curious and compelling, all three of them, and I certainly didn't expect that they would also be tense and well-scripted. The wraparound story introduces a young female marketing executive who, strangely enough, is charged with writing a horror screenplay. She's inexperienced and frustrated about this, but she finds inspiration in her nightmares and around the campfire during a trip with her friends. At some point during the camping trip the lead actress' boyfriend even gets possessed by a sort of rancid demon, but even that bizarre plot twist results in a couple of funny moments. The first story, which is definitely my favorite one, introduces the marginal couple Troy and Starla Floyd. They are offered a book by a strange door-to-door salesman and discover that it very accurately describes every move they make and every word they say; even stuff that hasn't occurred yet. The second story deals with the difficult themes like time loops and altering history, but the narration is light-headed and unpretentious and thus very easy to follow. In order to pay off his debt, a loser gambler is sent to rob the house of the creditor, allegedly so that he can recover the insurance money. Once there he witnesses the murder of his creditor's wife, but when he flees he ends up in the exact same place and the exact same time as the day before. As he's reliving the same experience multiple times, he discovers who the murderer is and why. The third and final story revolves on Alex Bender, as she just the world's first female champion chess player. Alex also happens to be a truly devoted and feminist opponent against violence towards women in video games and grabs every opportunity to criticize the famous Rubinstein Game Corporation and its CEO on national television. After another fierce press interview she gets kidnapped and ends up in the mansion of the deranged CEO – Martin Rubinstein. Alex now becomes the lead character in a very vivid violent game herself, and the price of defeat is death
I can't emphasize enough how deeply I'm impressed by the originality and the freshness of the little stories featuring in "Terror Eyes". That alone makes it easier for me to overlook the poor technical aspects and micro-budgeted production values. Most of the actors/actresses appear in various roles and clearly enjoy themselves a lot. One of the actresses, Vivian Schilling even co-wrote the better-than-expected screenplay. Talk about multitasking!