Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin) is a starving artist. To make ends meet he has resorted to burglarizing people’s homes and stealing their money. One night he is rifling through a woman’s purse when she wakes up and confronts him. He tries to shut her up, but she grabs a spoon from a bedside table and gouges out his left eye. In pain Arthur backs up and falls out of the window. The event sends him into insanity and against women.
Arthur is tormented by what happened to him. He begins killing women and removing their eyes. He uses the eyes in his artwork by encasing them in plastic. Arthur manages to rack up a succession of dead women who are now missing their eyes.
Arthur’s former lover, Anna, a rich entitled woman, shows up looking to get him back. By now, Arthur is totally insane and it’s not long before Anna realizes it and sneaks out. Arthur continues to kill women and steal their eyes. While in a graveyard digging up a corpse, Arthur is confronted by a police detective who somehow managed to find out that Arthur is the killer. The detective is left dead in the opened grave.
Later, Arthur meets Gigi. Gigi is an art student who has seen Arthur’s work and likes it. She wants Arthur to mentor her. It is the first time that any woman has admired work. Gigi has no idea that Arthur is a part time serial killer.
“The Headless Eyes” AKA “Blood Thirsty Butcher” was released in 1971 and was written and directed by Kent Bateman. It is a grind-house exploitation horror film and a quasi-revenge picture. The film is a low budget “Z” experimental-ish venture.
For some reason the film had an X rating at one time. I’m not sure why since the gore is only moderate and fleeting, unless I’m getting jaded. The movie had a short theatrical release, mostly at drive-ins, and then went into oblivion. I’m not surprised. A lot of movies that are bad still have something going for it in the realm of camp value. Unfortunately, in this case, the movie was short on camp as well as short on entertainment, but large in the over acting arena.
The best part of the movie is the artwork on the cover of the video box. It was used again for the movie “The Killer Eye” 1999.
Director Kent Bateman is the father of actors Justine and Jason Bateman.