Total Recall: The Eyes Have It

This week,
Jessica
Alba stars in The
Eye, a spooky tale of a blind woman who gets surgery to restore her
sight — and ends up seeing lots of creepy stuff. Thus, we at Rotten Tomatoes
thought it would be a great time to peep some classic movies and scenes devoted
to the ol peepers.

The eyes are the first physical feature people notice on
each other, but in the movies, they’re probably the last. Unless you’re
Kubrick
and partly base your artistic legacy on visual motifs of the organ, the eyes
get lost in a medium that relies on dialogue and an actor’s mannerisms and tics
to tell the story. With this list, we set out to catalogue the movies that make
the most of these windows into our souls, which spiraled into a compendium of
eye-gouging. Enjoy! (And if you’re having a snack, consider finishing up right
now.)

Minority Report (91
percent on the Tomatometer)
Being a fugitive is hard in 2054, especially when your eyes
are being scanned at every corner. In a deliciously creepy scene, Officer John
Anderton (Tom Cruise) finds a black market surgeon (played by a very shady
Peter Stormare) willing to perform an eye transplant. There is a lovely
Clockwork Orange-esque eye clamp to make viewers squirm.
After the procedure, some seriously scary robot spiders crawl into the
apartment, and force Anderton to open his new eyes before they’ve had a chance
to heal. He wants to keep his old eyes, and later drops them and clumsily
chases after them as they roll towards the sewer, catching director
Steven
Spielberg in a rare moment of mordant humor.

Un Chien Andalou (100
percent)
Perhaps it was the Pixies who best described the essential
appeal of Un Chien Andalou in "Debaser":

"Got me a movie!
I want you to know!
Slicin’ up eyeballs!
I want you to know!"

Luis Bunuel and
Salvador Dali‘s 1929 surrealist masterpiece
is much more than that of course; Un Chien Andalou is
probably the most famous and influential avant-garde film, a full-bore assault
on reason and convention. However, one of the primary reasons for its lasting
influence is its shocking, notorious opening scene, in which a man takes a
razorblade to a woman’s eye. (If it makes you feel any better, a cow’s eye was
used for the scene. And yes, the cow was dead.)

Kill Bill: Volume Two (85
percent)
The two volumes of Kill Bill demonstrate
the many ways that the human body can be beaten, sliced, diced, and skewered —
not to mention buried alive. However, eyesight damage is also a significant
risk in Quentin Tarantino‘s epic. Case in point: as Elle Driver,
Daryl Hannah
suffers not one, but two debilitating retinal injuries. The first is at the
hands of martial arts master Pai Mei (who Driver later poisons) leaving her
with a pretty awesome looking eye patch. And the second? We won’t ruin it for you;
just watch the clip below (unless you’re squeamish, of course).

Zombi 2 (33 percent)
Aside from that sublime scene of a zombie boxing a shark at
the bottom of the ocean,
Lucio Fulci‘s Zombi 2 is largely
remembered for one scene, occurring after the undead outbreak is in full swing.
An unlucky lady gets zombie ambushed and her head is grabbed and guided
sl-o-o-o-wly towards a protruding pointy stick. Rather graphic, profoundly campy,
and about as gut-wrenching as when
the evil security guard gets steamrolled in
Austin Powers.

Thriller: A
Cruel Picture
To get banned in the progressive stronghold of Sweden, it
takes only a movie of rampant misogyny, misanthropy, violence, vengeance
killings, hardcore sex, and cadaver misappropriation. Its clear influence on
Kill Bill spurred renewed interest in the movie, and
Thriller: A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One
Eye) has emerged as a hallmark of exploitation cinema, not only for
its extreme content but also director
Bo Arne
Vibenus‘s commitment to produce
compelling angles and shots amidst the carnage. An actual recently deceased
young woman was used for the film’s literally eye-popping scene.