See No Evil (1971 film)

See No Evil (released in the United Kingdom as Blind Terror) is a 1971 British psychological horror-thriller film directed by Richard Fleischer[3] and starring Mia Farrow as a recently blinded woman who is stalked by a psychopath while staying at her family's rural estate.

Out on a date with her boyfriend, Steve, she escapes the fate of her relatives, who are murdered at their home, along with the gardener, by a psychotic killer.

Sarah returns from her date and spends the night in the house, unaware that three of her family members' corpses are strewn in various rooms.

He also tells Sarah the killer is returning to retrieve a bracelet he left behind and directs her to where to locate it before succumbing to his injuries and dying.

In an effort to save Jack, Tom pretends to take Sarah to the police but instead locks her in a secluded shed.

Steve and his men leave Sarah at his house to recuperate and begin a search for the killer, who they assume is a gypsy.

The killer, still searching for his lost bracelet, is stealthily going through the pockets of Sarah's clothes, left beside the tub while she is taking a bath.

Interviewed in 1997, writer Brian Clemens recalled that he wrote the script 'on spec' and Columbia Pictures told him: "'Well, if Mia Farrow plays the lead, we'll buy it,' and she read it and liked it, and so they bought it and we shot it.

[8] Fleischer says what happened was after the film was completed they changed the "opening titles of the picture to give it more social significance".

For all the potency of a camera movement, it can never have exactly the power of a conceptual image, and therefore "See No Evil" is better with its mindless terror than with its witless meaning.

[10]Variety called it "a perfect modern speciment of the old-style A-plus suspense programmer which often broke through to the big time... Superbly written... brilliantly photographed.

"[11] "For sheer suspense", wrote The Palm Beach Post, it "may well be without peer", but, while praising the performance of Mia Farrow, considered the 'fiendish gamut' of injury her character is subjected to could 'only be called sadism'.