Mansion of the Doomed (1976)

Mansion of the Doomed (1976), an early production from Charles Band's Full Moon Pictures, seems to have been inspired by those surgical horror films that flourished on the continent during the sixties and into the seventies.  This was a sub-genre centered around the attempts of mad doctors to rectify disfigurements, madness or some other ailment in some female relative, most often a wife or daughter.  This would inevitably involve large quantities of gore and organ transplants from unwilling donors.  Amongst the best known examples are Jess Franco's The Awful Dr Orlof (1962) and Georges Franju's Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960), both of which involve the attempts of scientists to restore their daughters' faces.  Mansion of the Doomed follows the same template, although this time the surgeon is trying to restore his daughter's vision via a series of eye transplants, all of which, inevitably, go wrong.  What carried the earlier films through their rather limited plots was their visual style - the Franju film, in particular, features some striking and haunting visuals - and directorial flair.  Mansion of the Doomed, by contrast, is, in the hands of director Michael Pataki, a crude shocker, jarringly edited with uninteresting visuals and no sense of style whatsoever.  In place of suspense and tension, it relies upon the sheer nastiness of its central idea of people having their eyes forcibly removed to try and shock the viewer, with repeated shots of the eyeless sockets of his various victims, (who he keeps alive, locked up in the cellar).

Unfortunately, the film's script quickly becomes repetitive, with each eye replacement failing and the doctor seeking a new donor, over and over, with too little variation in the pattern.  The only abduction attempt that generates any real tension is when the scientist tries to abduct a child, persuading her to get into his car with him.  With its distinct undertones of child molestation, (it could be one of those seventies UK public information films aimed at kids, warning of the dangers of getting into cars with strangers), the sequence is genuinely disturbing and there's a palpable sense of relief when the girl panics and manages to get away from the doctor.  Not that it is an entirely wasted effort from his perspective: trying to chase her, he collides with another car, whose two occupants become his next victims when they follow him to his house to remonstrate with him.  Ultimately, the plot unfolds entirely predictably, with no twists or surprises.  You just know that those blind people are going to escape from that cellar and enact their own version of 'an eye for an eye' on the doctor.  The main point in the film's favour is the cast - Richard Basehart stars as the doctor, while Gloria Graham is his faithful assistant, there's also an early role for Lance Henriksen as the first victim.  Basehart gives his role all that it's worth, his performance effectively charting the doctor's stumbling descent into obsession and madness, as his professional veneer gradually disintegrates and he becomes a mumbling, on;y semi-coherent, wreck, driven solely by his obsessive quest to restore his daughter's sight.  Sadly, by the time the film finally staggers to a conclusion, the audience is past caring about his plight, relieved that their ordeal is finally over.