Hate Older than Curses

A hypocrite preacher and an Irish faerie lead a group of settlers into a piece of demoniac American wilderness in 1983's Eyes of Fire. A low budget example of folk horror and influenced by the 1980s' popularity of Celtic mysticism, the film nonetheless has some intriguing characters, an interesting premise, and some slick cinematography.

Will Smythe (Dennis Lipscomb), a new preacher in a small settlement, barely escapes hanging after the other settlers discover he's living with a little harem of other men's wives. Smythe is saved by the magic of Leah (Kalene Crockett), described by a child as "an Irish faerie". She doesn't usually speak English and wears only a shift when she's not running around naked. Her curly red hair looks perfectly maintained, though.

Still, Crockett has the perfect face for this character and I enjoyed both the character and the performance.

Smythe and a group of people devoted to him steal the nearby ferry and head off to start their own settlement. Smythe's main squeeze is Eloise (Rebecca Stanley). Eloise's husband, Marion (Guy Boyd), is a skilled hunter who catches up with them and narrowly saves them from a Shawnee attach. Marion also has a really bad wig.

Hair is definitely the worst part of this film.

The Lovecraftian setup of the damned glen the group stray into is the best. The film very wisely leaves explanations to a minimum as strange, naked people start appearing and disappearing and something with burning orange eyes emerges from a tree to kill the settlers one by one.

The first solid hint of the supernatural we see is a wonderfully subtle introduction of faces in the trunks of trees. The appear without any fanfare and when I first saw them I honestly wasn't sure if I wasn't imagining them.

The story is told to us by the only two survivors, a couple of children, who are speaking to a French military officer. So we know from the beginning that nearly everyone gets killed, which adds to the sense of doom and mystery. The preacher, Smythe, is a little more complex than you might expect though sadly he ends up being a too typical anti-Christian caricature of the '80s and '90s.

Eyes of Fire is available on Shudder.