Faye Dunaway, then a big star after her Oscar for Network, plays Laura Mars, a fashion photographer who keeps having what my mother would have called "funny turns". Every so often, her suppressed psychic gift allows her to see through the eyes of a killer, as he begins polishing off the women who have acted as her models. The killer is clearly a bit of a symbolist, because he stabs his victims in the eyes - "Eyes of Laura Mars", geddit ? Now, judging by the sheer tastelessness of the photographs, he would have done better to get rid of Laura and be done with it. You see, she claims to be exploring the contemporary links between violence and sexuality in our society - which is also a good excuse for showing lots of topless models wrestling with each other, shooting anonymous men or staining their shagpiles with blood. This presumably seemed very shocking in the late seventies - not as shocking as the fashions, granted, but still pretty startling - but now looks like the sort of thing which even the mighty intellects at "Loaded" might consider a touch passe.

So, we're launched on a rather drawn-out murder mystery in which the killer seems to be getting closer to Laura. Who could the eye-poking, model-mauling maniac be ? Could it be heavily camp Donald, Laura's agent, played as a refugee from "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" by Rene Auberjonois ? Or perhaps her violent, alcoholic and penniless ex-husband Michael, etched with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer by Raul Julia. What about her twitchy chauffeur, Brad Dourif, a man with a criminal record and an even more criminal taste in facial hair ? Clearly, she needs to watch her back and she has assistance in this quarter from Tommy Lee Jones as caring cop John Neville who wastes no time in getting his charge into bed. However, he scores points for good taste by saying nasty things about her photos on his first appearance.

This is all utter tosh, directed by Kershner with more style than it deserves. It was originally devised by John Carpenter in the early seventies as a fast moving thriller, but his original idea was buried in a welter of pretentious social comment and tediously unimaginative character scenes by David Zelag Goodman. Carpenter was more than happy to disown the film, and it's clear that his version would have been considerably more violent and probably more efficient. The problem, laid bare on the audio commentary, is that the pace and tension Kershner brings to the excellent New York location filming is dissipated by his obvious belief that this is a significant statement about the links between art and violence in society. It says nothing that hasn't been said rather more eloquently in a hundred other films, and by avoiding exploitation of the traditional thriller elements it ends up being rather dull. However, the photoshoot scenes are a big redeeming factor, being so hilariously vulgar as to edge towards John Waters territory, and the fashions and haircuts really do seem to come from some mysterious alien culture. Was this really only 22 years ago ? Incidentally, I was distracted some way into the film by noticing the strong resemblance between Tommy Lee Jones and the man on the packet of "Just For Men" hair colouring.

Faye Dunaway works incredibly hard to make the film believable, and she does manage to create a halfway realistic character despite the hinderance of the script. The men in the cast ham away with varying degrees of success - Julia is embarrassing while Auberjonois is quite engaging. Tommy Lee Jones looks rather lost, and his performance falls apart completely in the second half of the film.

The "psychic link" scenes are quite well filmed, but the decision to keep the violence implicit means that they aren't particularly shocking and several "jump" moments are totally muffed by Kershner. As for the plot, it gets sillier and sillier until it becomes totally ludicrous. The twist at the end is hilarious, not to mention pretty obvious right from the beginning of the film. If Kershner wants the film to be taken seriously, then why does he use this sort of daft plotting which seems to come from some inter-war melodrama.

Finally, a public service warning. The would-be "chic" tone of the film is set by a truly horrible title song from La Streisand called "Prisoner". Once heard, never forgotten so you might want to play the first chapter without sound.

The Disc

Columbia have done a fairly good job with the DVD of this film. It looks and sounds fine, and there are some reasonable extra materials.

The disc contains an average to good anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer. It looks quite pleasing, with strong colours, a good level of detail and generally sound contrast. It does sometimes look a little too soft, although I suspect that is the film and not the transfer. There is some artifacting, but nothing too distracting, and the picture is occasionally rather grainy.

The soundtrack is the original mono and is fine without being anything special. The music doesn't seem to come across very strongly, but that could, again, be a fault of the original presentation.

There are three bonus features. Firstly, there is an audio commentary from Irvin Kershner. Now, Kershner is a very intelligent and experienced filmmaker, who taught George Lucas amongst others at film school, but he doesn't seem to have much to say here. Not that this stops him from talking, but he spends an unconscionable amount of time describing what is happening in the scene we're watching - i.e. things we can deduce for ourselves. Occasionally interesting comments about the actors and about how he changed the original Carpenter material to fit his own concerns, but this is mostly blargh and not really worth listening to.

Then we get a camp delight from the seventies; a featurette called "Visions". This is an eleven minute behind the scenes look at the shooting of the film, made in 1977 and full of pretentious nonsense from virtually everybody who says anything. I won't spoil it for you, but it really is wonderfully idiotic.

Finally, there is a photo gallery of the photos that Laura Mars shoots in the film. This is quite interesting, not least because it confirms one's suspicions that Laura is to art what Richard Whiteley is to comedy. The gallery is backed by an audio explanation of the differences between John Carpenter's original script and the film that eventually emerged. Clearly, Carpenter is clearly irritated by his name being on a film that bears little resemblance to his original intention, but I imagine that he was quite happy with the pay cheque and the chance to get a major studio film on his C.V.

There are a generous 28 chapters, some of which give a bit too much of the plot away so don't read them before you watch the film. The menus have a nice picture behind them, but are static. Columbia have also provided a bewildering array of subtitles.

I have to admit that Eyes Of Laura Mars is quite enjoyable to watch despite being pretty desperate, and that raises it above the one star level. But it hasn't dated very well and is probably not worth the rather hefty twenty quid price tag. The disc is quite well put together though, and fans of the film are unlikely to be disappointed.

Mike Sutton