White of the Eye (1987) – Nostalgia Central

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A murderer haunts the streets of Globe, a surrealistic copper mining town in Arizona, where four rich, bored and beautiful housewives have been slaughtered and dismembered in bouts of psychotic violence.

When the big-city homicide detectives move in, their number one suspect is Paul White (David Keith), a provider of high-end audio systems for the more affluent locals and a part-time lover of one particular wealthy man’s wife.

Paul’s wife, Joan (Cathy Moriarty), settled with a nine-year-old daughter, thought her troubles were over when she left her disturbed and erratic former boyfriend, Mike Desantos (Alan Rosenberg).

But the discovery of her husband’s infidelity is swiftly followed by the realisation that she has run from one psychotic man into the arms of someone far more dangerous.

David Keith out-psychos Norman Bates as the woman-hating maniac whose soft southern lilt disguises a vicious killer.

But the film is dominated by Cathy Moriarty’s performance as a woman who is about as far as you can get from the screaming, doe-eyed female victims usually found in this genre.

Alternating between aggression and vulnerability, she comes to the sickening conclusion that the man she loves spends his evenings dismembering other women.

Since co-directing Performance in 1970, Donald Cammell made only two films: the off-beat science fiction movie Demon Seed (1977), and this tense, savage thriller about a serial killer, co-written with his wife, China Kong (who appears in the film as Ruby Hoy).

Paul White
David Keith
Joan White
Cathy Moriarty
Mike Desantos
Alan Rosenberg
Detective Charles Mendoza
Art Evans
Phil Ross
Michael Greene
Danielle Smith
Danielle White
Anne Mason
Alberta Watson
Harold Gideon
William G. Schilling
Fred Hoy
David Chow
Stu
Marc Hayashi
Liza Manchester
Mimi Lieber
Caryanne
Pamela Seamon
Lucas Herman
Bob Zache
Arnold White
Danko Gurovich
Ruby Hoy
China Kong (Cammell)
Grunveldt
Jim Wirries
Joyce Patell
Katie Waring