I remembered seeing this when I was a kid and it scared the crap out of me. I still remember somewhat vividly some of the scenes. Going back nearly 30 years later, I was thinking that it might be good to watch again for Halloween. I thought wrong. An outcast heretic/sinner preacher goes with his family and a few other random people to find somewhere where they can live in adultery. Instead they find hostile Indians, and take refuge in a valley where they Indians are afraid to go. Always a good idea. The "mystery" of death valley is given away before they even get there (you see, the blood of all innocent animals that are killed collects in some places, and forms into a blood hungry mindless demon which is obviously the collective will of all innocent animals.) They find a deserted settlement there which was obviously destroyed and the former residents turn out to be flesh eating ghosts. Several deaths are involved. A special needs/witch/Irish girl helps them escape. Then finally, they nail the kids in a coffin and shove it into a river to save them. Bad acting. Plot that stops making sense after the first 30 minutes. Bad special effects. This might have been good if it had been on on MST3K. You will find yourself rooting for the deaths of the settlers just to get the movie over with. Most of the reviewers of this only pretend to like it because they think it's cool to like obscure movies. This one is obscure because IT'S CRAP. I would have given this a -10, but the scale was from 1-10.

This is a wonderful find for any horror film buff who can appreciate the slow-build of the typical "giallo" film, to which it compares stylistically, with a good dose of Gothic influence. Rather than load all of the budget toward the effects and skimp everywhere else, the film-makers opted to use the relatively unknown and overlooked talents of the best low-budget effects and pyrotechnics person in the business, Tassilo Baur. (I personally witnessed him put together special effects on a USC student film in 1981, on a budget of about $100 that looked like thousands. If you look carefully at the effects here, you'll see how well-realized they are for such little money.) Anyway, the effort in this gem was well-placed in the story, the direction and the acting. Overall good production values make this look as good as most studio stuff, and it's much more thoughtful. Great eerie locations and soundtrack add to the atmosphere. Fans of horror films that offer more than violence only for the sake of violence will appreciate this find. Recommended!

Watched 'Eyes of Fire' shortly after its release in 1983. Haunting, atmospheric and portraying nature spirits at their most potent. Something about it just captures your soul and stays with you - Leah the Irish faery.. and the faces of the spirits emerging from the trees... It felt as though you were really out there in the woods.Managed to get hold of a video about a month ago - WOW - even better than I had remembered it. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would jump at the chance to experience this unique, enchanting film. After all, if 'The Company of Wolves' (1984) has just been re-released on DVD, why can't Eyes of Fire...

Frankly, I was expecting a much more engrossing film from the almost unanimously positive word-of-mouth I had read about this on the internet. For a truly original idea - an exploration of dark early American frontier mythology - this movie failed due to one overriding problem: a lack of story focus. It is a shame, because director Avery Crounse, whose work I was unfamiliar with before seeing this, displays a visual talent on par with such macabre masters as Roman Polansky and Alejandro Jodorowsky. This movie contains one striking, horrifying image after another. Unfortunately, these images don't add up to a strong film because most of them make no sense in connection to the storyline. The basic barebones that I picked up on the plot is that a preacher, aided by the mysterious witch-like powers of his teenage daughter, steals from a local town and heads off on the river with his mistress and some others to the "promised land" where he can form a new Christian society. However, once they arrive in an abandoned Indian encampment in the deserted woods, they fall prey to some forest witches or ghosts.It is at this point that the story completely confused me. There never is a good explanation for all of the bizarre supernatural events in the woods, and especially the connection they have with the preacher's daughter, who seems to only speak in some archaic tongue. The supernatural imagery is riveting, but it was not enough to keep me interested. Because I really could not care less about any of these numbskull Puritans, watching the movie became an additional chore. I'll be honest: I hated reading "The Scarlet Letter" in high school, and watching this movie, with its laughable Puritanical superstitions, reminded me of slogging through that book. I would watch this again if I thought I could gain from a repeat viewing, but unfortunately I strongly doubt that I would.