Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

adriangr I was pretty impressed with this. Well the film has a lot to live up to, being a carbon copy of so many other films in the small horror sub-genre that might be known as "brilliant surgeon kidnaps victims and operates on them in an attempt to restore his disfigured daughter to her former glory". It's been done before, most notably in the beautiful "Les Yeux Sans Visage", but let's not forget "Mill of the Stone Women", "Corruption", "Faceless" and I'm sure I've missed a few.But there are two quite good differences here: in this plot all the daughter needs is a new pair of eyeballs, and secondly, none of the unwilling "donors" in this movie actually die after their surgery, they are collected, caged and left to go mad!. Which makes for some of the best parts of the story.There are weak spots, however. Richard Basehart is pretty flat as the twisted eye surgeon Dr Chaney (oh please...!) who has no thought but for restoring his daughter's sight. He plays the role on a single note, and give the character no sense at all of anything going beneath the surface. At times I wondered of he had been studying the William Shatner school of acting, as his mumbling and lack of impact got quite annoying after a while. Also - the impossibility of the eye transplants working is obvious very early on. Right at the start, Gloria Grahame (as the doctors assistant/partner) cries "But it's impossible, it would mean destroying the optic nerve" or somesuch argument. The doctor never manages to come back to her on that. And later on, in a scene that actually made me groan out loud, a colleague sees a successful eye transplant and gasps: "But how...?" Dr Chaney just smirks and says "The real question is...why?" No - the real question really IS "how"?!! OK those things aside, the movie does a good job. For all the poor victims, it's a gruesome fate. Being drugged and then waking up in a cage with both your eyeballs missing is a horrific idea and they all manage to portray the right level of hysteria. There's even a great close up of one victim's twitching empty eye sockets near the start. Shame that later on the heavy browed "eyeless" prosthetics make them look like a bit like they are wearing the "Scream" movie killer's mask!! But the plight of these blind, caged victims is what makes the movie. The fact that none of the actors could see through their eyeless make-up probably contributes to their believable portrayals of panic. In fact the character of the daughter almost disappears from the script in the second half of the story, so small is her importance to the tale.The tension is well maintained though, and things move pretty snappily -Dr Chaney seems to go through victims at an incredible rate. And if you have any fears about losing your eyesight, I think this film will definitely give you nightmares.

insomniac_rod The plot of this one is really disturbing and scary. "Mansion of the Doomed" provides drama, horror, suspense, and most of all cheap gore effects that will surely please the lovers of the red!The drama is portrayed by the Doctor's situation. He victimizes innocent people in order to take off their eyeballs to later practice eye surgery on her daughter in order for her to recover her sight. Crudely, any father would do the impossible to help a daughter, that's for sure. The fact that this lunatic takes the eyeballs of the victims and later cages them in his mansion is the disturbing factor. With a plot like that you can expect a brutal and chilling exploitation movie. Well there are some gruesome and disturbing scenes involving negligent eye surgery and that's about it. There's no suspense, even false scares, and you can never say that the movie shocked you, it just disturbs the audience by showing violent scenes.There's not much to comment about this one, except that if you like the sub-genre you should check this one out. It's as cheesy as you can get but it's plot makes it eerie. The movie wasn't just done correctly.

Paul Andrews I watched this last night on a twenty plus year old VHS tape I brought of eBay, under it's UK title 'Massacre mansion'. We open with shots of Dr Leonard Chaney (Richard Basehart) walking through a hospital, he goes to a patient and inserts his thumbs into her eye sockets. As it turns out this is just a nightmare, according to the accompanying monologue by Basehart anyway. He goes on to talk about his daughter Nancy Chaney (Trish Stewart), we see scenes of her swimming in a pool with her boyfriend Dr Dan Bryan (Lance Henriksen) with Doc Chaney lovingly looking on. He also talks of an accident. While driving along a dog runs out in front of Doc Chaney's car, he swerves to miss it and he crashes the car. Nancy, who was a passenger, is blinded in the accident. Luckily Doc Chaney isn't an ordinary Doctor, no he happens to be an eye surgeon! Using his medical expertise and help from his assistant Katherine (Gloria Grahame) he sets out to restore Nancy's sight by an eye transplant. Unfortunately the eyes need to be fresh, which means he needs to kidnap people and take their eyes out. First up it's Nancy's boyfriend and one of Doc Chaney's fellow professionals Doc Bryan. The transplant works to start with, however Nancy soon loses her sight again. Doc Chaney needs to know what went wrong so he prepares another operation, again the eyes are rejected. After several more operations he is still no closer to permanently restoring Nancy's sight. To add to his worries his basement is rapidly filling up with his eyeless victims, who he wants to keep alive so when he has discovered the secret he can give them back their sight too. Produced by Charles and Albert Band (and not a killer toy in sight!), cinematography by Andrew Davis (who would later go on to direct films such as the fugitive and under siege), make up effects by Stan Winston (terminator, jurassic park etc.) and directed by Micheal Pataki, massacre mansion has quality both in front and behind the camera. However that doesn't make it a particularly good film. The central idea is good, Doc Chaney isn't portrayed as a monster, but as a loving father who becomes more and more desperate as the hole he's dug himself gets deeper by the minute. The victims aren't simply there to be used, the film shows them trapped and blinded trying to help and comfort each other, it tries to make them part of the film that you want to care about. There's no real gore in it, except the first transplant which is shown, the others cut away before Doc Chaney begins to operate, but various shots are shown on a black and white monitor that Doc Chaney looks at to help himself, it wouldn't surprise me if this was real eye surgery footage. Whats there is, is quite effective, and the effect of the victims having no eyes is also well done. My biggest problem with it is that it's all rather dull and forgettable, and a little bit slow. Not bad I suppose, just average.

chadledwards Richard Basehart plays a doctor whose daughter is blinded in a car accident; the remainder of the film focuses on Basehart's attempts to restore his daughter's sight by kidnapping people and removing their eyes for unsuccessful transplants. Not bad horror flick, and very well-acted for such a low-budget effort. Basehart registers strongly as the determined doctor, as does '50's 'bad girl' Gloria Grahame as his devoted assistant, even though she is given very little to do. But be warned, this film is not for those with weak stomachs.