MOVIE REVIEWS : EXCRUCIATING VISION OF ‘EYES OF FIRE’

Whatever else you can say about “Eyes of Fire” (selected theaters), it’s offbeat. How many pre-Revolutionary War horror movies can you name--especially ones with casts that speak mostly in Irish brogue?

Writer-director Avery Crounse doesn’t draw from the usual bad-movie sources; his influences are a muddled stew that seems to include James Fenimore Cooper, William Butler Yeats and Werner Herzog. Yet, practically every minute of this movie is excruciating. It manages to be both unpredictable and stupefyingly dull.

Crounse imagines a band of wanderers--a randy minister, his adulterous brood, a redheaded witch, a babbling crone and a philosophical leatherstocking--who flee some puritanical settlers and stumble into a forest apparently ruled by the devil.

Strange things commence immediately. Weird faces leer out of the trees. A mysterious foundling is abandoned in the yard. Rotting corpses erupt from the ground and vomit pea soup. And a band of naked, muddy people keeps running back and forth in front of the cabins and disappearing into thin air. (What on earth do they want? A shower?)

Since the previous occupants were probably massacred and the forest is surrounded by hostile Indians, it hardly seems a good place for a settlement. Yet the lewd minister--a real Pangloss--insists on remaining. He stays adamant to the end, even when people begin disappearing, the foundling develops cat’s eyes, the tree-beings start vomiting crankcase oil and the romps of the naked, muddy people are accompanied by explosions and monotonous synthesizer music.

Meanwhile, the redheaded witch, who speaks almost exclusively in gibberish, goes into trances and sees windstorms interspersed with strange visions and bad video effects. (The rest of the characters often seem in a trance too; many act as if they’ve been hypnotized.) This entire sorry tale is related by two survivors, the leatherstocking’s little girls, to some understandably incredulous French soldiers. The girls’ memory is prodigious: They even describe incidents that took place somewhere else, while they were sealed in a box floating down the river.

Working with a paltry budget, Crounse deserves a few points for originality. You can never guess what he’ll pull next. At one point, during an Indian encounter, the leatherstocking pops out of the woods with a huge gourd tied to his snout and capers around, reducing the Indians to helpless laughter. At another, Crounse cuts suddenly to the naked muddy people--who are gathered around the settler’s cow, milking it. See what we mean by stupefying unpredictability?

‘EYES OF FIRE’ A Seymour Borde and Associates release of an Elysian Pictures production. Producer Philip J. Spinelli. Director Avery Crounse. Script Crounse. Camera Wade Hanks, Don Devine. Art direction Greg Fonseca. Editor Michael Barnard. With Dennis Lipscomb, Rebecca Stanley, Guy Boyd, Karlene Crockett, Sally Klein.

Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).