The Eyes of Charles Sand (1972)

I saw this originally in 1972 when it aired on TV, and I remember it scaring the living daylights out of me as a kid. Just recently purchasing it from the Warner Archive, I sat down to relive my teenage memories.The film is about Charles Sand, a businessman who awakes from a vivid dream about his uncle, dead in his coffin, sitting up and pointing at him, with no pupils in the dead man's eyes. At the same time he is awakened by a phone call - his uncle has just died. His aunt Alexandra tells Charles that as the last living male member of the Sand family he has inherited "the sight" from his uncle. This "sight" will cause him to have visions from time to time in order to help people with some problem in their lives. It's not that Charles is a selfish or self-involved guy as much as this is not exactly a turn in his life that is welcomed. As he asks his aunt Alexandra - "Why me?".Almost immediately he begins to have visions of a dead woman reaching out to him, of a dead man falling through a wall, and of a young woman with long red hair in a long fur coat.It turns out that Emily Parkhurst (Sharon Farrell) of the wealthy prominent Parkhurst family is the red headed woman in trouble. She believes her brother is dead, and she says she continually sees visions of him, covered in blood. Now this is the part of the film that lost about one star from my rating. As Emily, Sharon Farrell is doing a most irritating Mod Squad version of Ophelia through about half of this movie. Nobody will take her seriously and from her behavior it is not hard to figure out why this is so. When Charles Sand gets involved, Emily's older sister tells Sand that the brother is in London and has written and called Emily several times since she claimed he was dead, but she just hangs on to her belief in his death beyond all reason. So now Sand is not only having to deal with doubts about his new gift, but doubts that the first person he has encountered since receiving this second sight is in trouble at all versus just being crazy.The last ten minutes or so are very suspenseful and worth putting up with Ms. Farrell's over-the-top performance. I'd recommend it especially if you liked the old made for TV movies of the 70's.Just one more thing. I really was scratching my head at first in response to the detached performance Joan Bennett gave as Charles' widowed aunt Alexandria when talking to Charles about his new found gift and the uncle's death. But then I realized it probably just fit in with what she already knew and what Charles' uncle wrote to him in the letter describing his new sixth sense "Neither man of God nor man of science can help you now. You are alone."

ESP-themed TV movie stars Peter Haskell as stockbroker Charles Sand, who learns upon his uncle's death that he has inherited "The Sight", a family gift/curse that enables him to have psychic visions that he must use to help those in need. No sooner is his uncle buried that a disturbed young woman(played by Sharon Farrell) needs his help to investigate whether her brother Raymond is alive or not, and what part her sister(played by Barbara Rush) and brother-in-law(played by Bradford Dillman) play in the mystery... Uneven thriller is both low-key and over-the-top, with decidedly mixed results. Some good visuals and jump-scares though. A proposed TV series pilot that never happened.

I too saw the very beginning of this movie and it scared the hell out of me. Something about him (Charles Sand) seeing that dead lady in the cemetery, I mean this lady really looked dead. I was just a kid at the time and I will never forget it. I'll never forget the white eyes of that dead old lady. God that was scary for a kid to see!!There was a eerie musical score too. It sounded something like running your finger across a piano keyboard from high scale to low. I just typed "The eyes of charles sand" into Alta Vista and I was lead here. Thank gop for search engines. I want to find this movie and see it now so I can convince myself it's not all that scary as I remember it from the mind of a child. That's why I gave it a 9!!!

Peter Haskell, formerly of the short lived "Bracken's World," starred in this pilot for a proposed series about a young man that is able to see "the dearly departed". He is called to investigate the mysterious death of the brother of loony Sharon Farrell (in an Emmy-worthy performance) and must contend with the other members of her family, sister Barbara Rush and her smarmy husband, Bradford Dillman.The movie has its moments, especially when Haskell's visions come out of the blue and surprise the viewer. Also, the "borrowed" Mancini score is tense-filled and goose-bump inducing.Spoiler: The highlight is when the reserved Rush becomes unglued, revealing her true nature.Though, it's not a great film, it does hold the interest for 90 minutes and that's all one should expect from a TV-movie.