Charles Band, and Full Moon. You can look no further than this movie to pretty much define the niche he carved out. While the 50’s had sci-fi monster movies, the 60-70’s had gritty torture movies, and the 80’s had campy slashers, I personally feel that the 90’s will pretty much be defined by the various Full Moon productions. A few years have passed since the hey-day, which allows us a more proper retrospect on the whole ordeal.

At first, or at least to anyone not into ‘bad movies’, they would simply write most of these off as worthless. A few stuck out like the Puppet Master films and Castle Freak, since they were fairly well filmed and produced. However the rest take a certain taste to really enjoy. Charles Band formed Full Moon in order to quickly fill the direct to video market. He took the approach of trying to make a low-budget movie have a big-budget feel. This, I think, is where some say the let down occurs, but I feel it helps bring b-movies to a whole new level. The sets are not elaborate, but they are complete and complex, with attention to detail being a high priority. Sets may be few in this case those, which maybe the entire movie taking place in only a few locations. Acting is usually performe by b-movie veterans, and the cast is usually older than the stupid college-to-look crowd. [break]

Killer Eye fits many of these perfectly. The set consists of a lab, attic, and two apartment rooms. Nothing else happens outside these areas. So in essense, the movie feels small, but this is all that is needed to tell the rather rediculous story.

The rediculous story centers around a scientist, his wife, assistant, and two random muscle guys who do little in the movie. The scientist is trying to create eye drops that will allow people to see into the 8th dimension. Of course he can’t get legit human guinea pigs, so he hires underage male prostitute runaways for this purpose. Aftre explaining the eye drops and 8th dimension thing to one, the runaway seems to feel that his original job duties might actually be less weird. However, he agrees to take the eye drops, looks through a microscope, and then open a portal to another world. An entity inhabits his eye, and rips free, somehow growing to six feet in the process.

For a while, the eye just sort of creepily leers at people while they are busy with other things like getting high on pills, or using a treadmill. This soon turns into America’s closest brush with Hentai, as women seem to confuse writhing tentacles with their husband’s fingers if they had their eyes closed. Supposedly the eye has some sort of mind control as well. Perhaps that plays a role.

However this of course doesn’t fair well with the crew, save for the scientist, who decides it’s best to work with the Eyeball..for science’s sake naturally. Somehow it ends, and I forget how, but with these types of movies, it’s fairly irrelevant as the focus is on the journey, not the destination.