“I think it’s really tragic that this is the kind of junk that’s passing for art these days.”

Sitting Duck’s rating: Four out of 10 eye gougings

Sitting Duck’s review: I’m going to confess to a minor cult cinema heresy. When it comes to John Carpenter, I’m kind of indifferent. Aside from Big Trouble in Little China, his oeuvre has never really grabbed me.

So you might think I would have given our current Theme Week a hard pass. And normally you’d be correct. However, my attention had recently been drawn to Eyes of Laura Mars courtesy of Schlockmeisters. It’s not a John Carpenter film in the usual sense, as he was only the story writer and didn’t hold the final screenplay in high regard. But it was included in the list of movies Justin sent us to choose from, so I called dibs. For you see, it features something far more terrifying than anything in the Halloween franchise: Tommy Lee Jones sporting Seventies Hair.

Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a fashion photographer who has garnered controversy thanks to the stylized violence in her work. Depending on who you ask, she’s either holding up a mirror to the ugly underbelly of American society or is an exploitative sicko.

On the night before the release of her new photography book, she has a nightmare where the book’s photo editor Doris Spenser is brutally murdered. What makes it particularly unsettling is how she sees it through the killer’s POV. During a soiree held for the book’s release the next evening, New York’s Finest arrive to take certain persons of interest downtown for questioning about the murder Laura somehow saw.

The next day, Laura conducts a photo shoot at Columbus Circle. During it, she has another vision of a brutal murder, which sends her wandering off in a daze. When she comes back to her senses, Laura finds herself at the residence of Elaine Cassel, who is currently involved with Laura’s ex-husband Michael Reisler (Raúl Juliá). Laura then realizes that it was Elaine who she saw being killed, and that the visions may be occurring in real time. However, she’s worried about how to tell the police about this without coming across as either crazy or an accessory to the crime.

Fortunately, the lead investigator of the case John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) has an open mind regarding this. In fact, he’s noticed that several of the photos in her book have an eerie match to some old crime scene photos that were never released to the public. Perhaps Laura has some sort of psychic connection to the killer and it has been subconsciously influencing her work. The only question is who that person might be. Michael certainly seems to be the most probable culprit. Then again, it could be her shifty ex-con chauffeur Tommy Ludlow (Brad Dourif).

Feh! Red herrings, all of them!

I’ll start off by noting that the clairvoyant visions are never really explained, either in why Laura gets them or how they work. This is probably for the best. Normally this sort of playing the plot point cards close to the vest grates my cheese. But the more I think about it, whatever rationales that may have been cobbled together are all but guaranteed to be kind of stupid. I’ve come up with a few potential ideas of what the writers might have been thinking, and it isn’t pretty. So I’m willing to let it slide here.

Acting-wise, the weak link is our leading lady Faye Dunaway. Now, her performance isn’t a complete disaster. But when she drops the ball, she drops it hard, recalling why Mommie Dearest became the Unintentional Comedy Sensation of 1981. Much like Robin Williams, she’s the sort of performer who needs a director willing to reign in her more obnoxious impulses for the good of the film.

I imagine many of you reading this only had a vague notion that Tommy Lee Jones had an acting career prior to the 1990s. But as it turns out, he had been at for over 20 years before he finally netted an Oscar for his role in The Fugitive. Watching him here, you can see hints of the traits we’ve come to know and love about him. But at this point they have yet to gel together properly. And dear Gawd that hair is just so distracting.

Thank goodness for the presence of engaging supporting characters. The ones that stand out in particular are René Auberjonois as Laura’s flamboyant agent Donald Phelps and Brad Dourif as Tommy Ludlow. Auberjonois’ performance brings to mind his character of Clayton Endicott III from the sitcom Benson. As for Brad Dourif, he’s good in anything. He was even good in Dune — and nobody was good in Dune.

One of the more unfortunate plot developments involves a trope popularly associated with Noir (and one of the reasons I dislike the genre), wherein the detective investigating the case becomes romantically involved with the client. As well as the inherent silliness of the cliché, Dunaway and Jones don’t make for a very compelling couple.

But even worse is the ending. Now there are plenty of otherwise good movies that fumble their endings (looking at you, Sneakers). There’s even the occasional great movie that fizzles in the last 10 minutes or so. A good ending is not easy. But this is a different level of screw-up. I won’t spoil it for you folks. You can either choose to brave the movie yourself, or be a great big chicken and read the Wikipedia article instead. But I will say that it involves some tenth-rate soap opera plotting. How much of this is Carpenter’s fault is hard to say. I suspect the answer is, “More than he’d care to admit.”

Like so many bad movies, there’s a kernel of a good idea here. But it fell victim to either too many rewrites or not enough, depending on who you think was at fault. The only other question left is why seeing this movie prompted George Lucas to hire director Irvin Kershner to handle The Empire Strikes Back.

Intermission!

• Filmed in PsychoStalkerVision!
• So now we get credits!
• Whenever possible, avoid having psychic visions while jaywalking
• Leaving your car unlocked in 1970s New York City seems ill-advised
• I can understand why he’s her ex
• Answering machine poetry
• Alone again, naturally
• Clayton gets his Ruth Buzzi on
• Being a 911 operator is truly a thankless job
• Obligatory MST3K Connections: Raúl Juliá (Michael Reisler) was Aram Fingal in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, and his character was as much a sleazebag here as he was there. Composer Artie Kane was composer for It Lives by Night.