Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a high-class fashion photographer in New York City. Laura specializes in photos that seem to glorify violence, mostly against women. She portrays what she sees is an accounting of what is happening in current society. She believes that if she photographs violence that people will be forced to acknowledge that it exists. Her work combines sex and violence in a graphic way. Controversy of her work follows. Her closest inner circle includes her manager, Donald Phelps (Rene Auberjonois) and her driver Tommy Ludlow (Brad Dourif).
In the middle of the night, Laura wakes from a nightmare where she sees, from the killer’s perspective, a woman being murdered. Laura finds out that there really was a murder and that the victim was her editor, Doris Spenser (Meg Mundy). Doris had been helping Laura with a book of photographs of her work. The book was being promoted at a release party being held at a gallery run by Elaine Cassell (Rose Gregorio). Laura learns of Doris’ death while she is at the party. Also at the release party Laura meets John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones). Later she learns that Neville is a Detective with the New York City Police Department and is in charge of the investigation into Doris’s murder.
During her next photo shoot, Laura gets another vision, but this time in the middle of the day. In her vision she sees the murder of another woman. The woman turns out to be the gallery owner, Elaine. Laura tells a police officer that she saw the murder. She is taken to the police station where she is interviewed by Neville. John shows her photographs of murder scenes taken of unsolved violent sex crimes. He then compares them to photos Laura took that are similar to the actual crime scene pictures. Laura is confused and upset at the loss of two people close to her but can’t explain why she sees in her mind what she sees. She then learns that her ex-husband, Michael Reisler (Raul Julia) is back in New York and had been seeing Elaine. Laura is questioned further.
As Neville continues his investigation he and Laura fall in love. Laura continues to have premonitions and the murders of people around her continue. It becomes evident that whoever is killing people is someone in Laura’s circle. Laura begins to wonder if she is next on the killer’s list.
“Eyes of Laura Mars” was released in 1978 and was directed by Irvin Kershner. It is an American supernatural thriller with some noir and horror elements. The movie was based on a speculative script called “Eyes” written by John Carpenter. Although mostly forgotten, the film does have a following.
I’ve seen this movie a couple times and the main problem I had with it was in believing the chemistry between Laura and Neville. It just didn’t buy it. In general, the movie was good with lots of suspects and lots of interesting murders. How Laura came to have the ability to see through a killer’s eyes is never really explored but to come up with something plausible would most likely have taken away from the pre-slasher elements of the film and that is what everybody is here for. Just going along with the unexplained premise makes the film a lot more fun to watch. It’s not a bad little thriller and has some good acting, interesting cinematography, and a nice cast of characters.
Barbra Streisand had been originally slated to play the role of Laura in the film; she had been dating producer Jon Peters at the time. She decided not to go ahead with it but had already recorded the theme song “Prisoner” for the film. It ended up being the only film that Barbra sings the title song for but does not appear in the film.
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Prisoner Song