Massacre Mansion | 1981 | USA | Michael Pataki

Directed by prominent character actor Michael Pataki, Massacre Mansion is actually an ‘80s retelling of the harrowing French horror film Eyes Without a Face, though repurposed as a ‘Face Without Eyes’ format. Respected and intelligent eye surgeon Len Chaney is wracked with guilt after a car accident leaves his daughter blinded permanently. Unable to accept this reality, he begins experiments using unwilling patients as eye donors, removing their eyes and transplanting them into his daughter’s head. While the surgery initially works, the subsequent loss of sight forces Chaney to desperately locate more people to liberate eyes from, eventually leading to an entire basement full of blinded, disturbed victims who’ll stop at nothing to get revenge on their mutilator. Known more today as Mansion of the Doomed, the film’s initially silly plot is bolstered by some great performances by Richard Baseheart, Gloria Grahame and Lance Henrikson, though the DPP found the numerous graphic scenes of eyeball removal in a surgical context to be most distasteful.