Mansion of the Doomed (1976)

Charles Band's perfectly grim and upsetting first-ever low-budget indie fright feature is a real creepy, unpleasant and most unnerving shocker starring Richard Basehart as a well-respected, but obsessed surgeon determined to restore his blind daughter's sight by stealing unwitting donors' eyes for extremely graphic and gruesome transplants! Pretty soon Basehart has a basement full of miserable, hideously moaning and hollow-socketed victims who include the always welcome Lance Henrikson (who's fine as usual in his initial foray into the horror genre) and blaxploitation actress Marilyn Joi.Capably directed with admirable conviction and seriousness by longtime favorite sleaze movie thesp Michael Pataki (who also helmed the outrageously bawdy soft-core musical version of "Cinderella" for Band), with excellent icky make-up f/x by Stan Winston, a splendidly spare'n'spooky Robert O. Ragland score, an appropriately eerie and unsparingly bleak tone (the sequences with Basehart's victims groaning in abject pain and suffering are quite potent and upsetting), solid cinematography by future big deal mainstream Hollywood director Andrew Davis (who went on to direct such big budget action blockbusters as "Under Siege" and "The Fugitive"), sturdy supporting performances by Gloria Grahame as Basehart's loyal, but worried assistant and Vic Tayback as a homicide detective, and a truly startling nice'n'nasty ending, this overall rates as a highly unsettling and effectively rough-edged little B-horror item.

"Mansion of the Doomed" is an obscure but good horror film, one which I managed to see in a theater when it was first released back in 1976. Strangely enough, the story about a surgeon descending into madness because he was the cause of his daughter's blindness, works on two levels. As the guilt-ridden Dr. Chaney (Richard Basehart) attempts to restore his daughter's sight, literally removing the eyeballs of unwilling victims and transplanting them, one feels pity for this misguided man. In his madness, Chaney also believes he will eventually restore the eyesight of all of his victims, which makes him even more driven. At the same time, the victims are all imprisoned in a basement cell in the doctor's house, where they, themselves eventually go insane. The horror element lies with the attempts of these horribly mutilated souls to both escape and exact revenge on their captors. The cast is very good considering the limited material they had to work with (most of the shocks are visual) and play their parts with feeling. Besides Basehart, there is onetime screen siren Gloria Grahame as his assistant. Unfortunately, she is given little to do, but it's still good to see her. Trish Stewart is the daughter who eventually realizes where all the eyes are coming from. And Lance Henricksen is her boyfriend (and the first victim). Well directed by Michael Pataki and broodingly photographed, "Mansion of the Doomed", despite it's low budget, is an out-of-the-mainstream terror film, which inspires as much sorrow as fear. A DVD has just been released, but the picture quality is below average, and the sound is just OK.

A once gifted surgeon Dr.Chaney has never managed to overcome the painful memory of a tragic car-accident that left his young daughter Nancy blind.Lost in his own private hell of insanity,he kidnaps young people and makes them involuntary donors in an operation attempt to restore his daughter's eye-sight.The real horror begins when the people he disfigured rise up from the dungeon where he keeps them captive to get revenge.This gruesome Charles Band production has real-life footage of actual eye surgery and some gross makeup effects(supplied by Stan Winston).The cinematography by Andrew Davis is pretty good and the film is as dark and creepy as they come.The suffering of the eyeless victims stored in the basement is truly disturbing and effective.Give it a look,if you are not easily disturbed.9 out of 10.

it's about a doctor and he has a daughter, and that daughter loses her eyes in a car accident. and now the father tries to transplant someone's eyes so she can get them (the daughter), so he takes people to his house and gives them some drugs so they fall asleep and then he operates their eyes out. and later he has the basement full of people without eyes and it's pretty gruesome. So if you want a sick movie go out and rent this.