Hailing from 1971, See No Evil is one of those giallo-esque thrillers that seemed to be overtaking the more gothic themed horror that Hammer et al had spent much of the previous decade making. This one concerns a blind woman who is being menaced by a pair of stupid boots… or rather the man in them; in a bid to avoid revealing the killer early, the film goes so far into avoid showing his face that the camera is almost glued to the floor.

In a terrible town known as Wokingham, committed horsey set type Sarah (Mia Farrow) arrives to stay with her uncle and aunt and their presumably teenaged daughter, having recently been blinded somehow in a freak horse-based accident. It never really goes into detail about what’s meant to have happened, but rest assured the horse apparently came off worse. Anyway, while staying at their obligatory stately home (because people in these sorts of films in Britain in the ‘70s are always loaded), she goes off to see her boyfriend for the day while said family are off to a function that afternoon. She comes back later to not-find-because-she’s-blind that someone’s come in and given her family a good killing in time after she left, their corpses not even really hidden around the house. Assuming they’re not back yet, Sarah continues to mill about the house, conveniently just missing bumping into (ho ho) any evidence that something is amiss. Unfortunately for her, the local murderer has managed to drop a piece of identifying evidence (natch), and (s)he’s also noticed this and goes back to retrieve it. High jinks ensue.

Despite talking of giallo some two paragraphs ago, this perhaps might be a bit misleading. The film is quite restrained when it comes to the excesses of the subgenre, with little onscreen violence or nudity or generally much of particularly prurient content that one might expect of the proper Italian stuff or indeed imitators thereof such as Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) or Dressed to Kill (1980). While the structure’s there, it seems to go to great lengths to have some sense of propriety. You do get into some casual acceptance of racist stereotypes though. Today, it’s about travellers and how them’s ups to no good. Like, it vaguely subverts it, but it doesn’t really change that it’s largely unquestioning of these issues for the bulk of the film.



Anyway, that aside, it’s a pretty well-made thriller. It hinges quite heavily on Farrow’s performance. She manages quite well, which is fortunate as she’s on screen for the bulk of the thing’s runtime (and also the film apparently wouldn’t have gotten made without her; it seems Columbia’s funding was entirely dependent on her casting and no one else would do for them), though if you’re hoping for something empowering, you might be disappointed. Sarah is safely in the damsel-in-distress mould. More or less, anyway. It generally portrays her as decently capable of doing things when just going about her business, just not so much of defending herself when being harassed by a mystery murder (wo)man, which… I guess isn’t unreasonable exactly. That said, the film’s best and most tense moments are during the phase before she realises what’s going on and the suspense and anticipation as to when she will find that something is amiss in the house while she comes within centimetres of treading on glass broken in the apparent scuffle or such. This is helped by the film having some top-notch sound and visual design, with a plenty of little details to amplify the paranoia. If you’re expecting a satisfying answer to the mystery… well… don’t, frankly. This is the era where motives beyond crazed murderiness were not the fashion and this isn’t really the exception, but nevertheless there’s a lot to make the film worth watching for a thriller fan.