101 Films

A brilliant surgeon kidnaps people and rips out their eyes, transplanting them into the skull of his blind daughter.

Producer Charles Band’s first horror movie, Mansion of the Doomed (1976), is available on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, and we get the chance to see what all the fuss was about – it was seized and confiscated (though not prosecuted) by UK authorities during the Video Nasties panic of the 1980s.

Known also as The Eyes of Doctor Chaney and House of Blood, this is a fairly straight forward mad doctor movie, directed by actor Michael Pataki  and starring Richard Basehart (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and Gloria Grahame.

Doctor Chaney’s lot in life is to successfully transplant a pair of eyes into his daughter who was blinded in a car accident. Having had their eyes removed, the victims are kept as prisoners in the basement. Unfortunately, the surgery keeps failing, and the number of victims starts growing. Genre favourite Lance Henriksen appears as an early victim.

101 Films’ release includes a fascinating documentary on the career of Charles Band, as well as a chat with editor Harry Keramidas and a booklet of new writing.

Verdict: Not particularly shocking by modern standards, this is a solid mad doctor shocker that ultimately suffers from repetition in the plot, but it’s fun if you’re in the right mood. 6/10

Nick Joy