What we have here is a film that shamelessly rips off the classic French film 'Eyes Without a Face', and does it rather well; despite being nowhere near the earlier effort in terms of quality. Rather than the whole face, director Michael Pataki focuses just on the eyes. Seventies cult cinema seems to be obsessed with eyeball violence, and it's not hard to see why as the eyes are the most sensitive part of the body, and having anything happen to them is a worst nightmare for many. While Mansion of the Doomed may not be as graphic and disturbing as its poster suggests it might be, the plot is still macabre enough to satisfy most horror fans. We focus on a doctor who unfortunately has a car crash, which results in the loss of his daughter's eyesight. Consumed with guilt, he decides to put his surgical skills to the test in the form of getting her some new eyeballs. So, naturally, he resorts to abducting various members of the public and proceeds to slice out their eyes in order to quash his guilt and let his daughter have her sight back.The atmosphere is extremely sleazy, and this is achieved through some dirty cinematography and a focus on the doctor's nasty experiments. The plot gets a little stretched before the end, and aside from the basic premise; there really isn't much to this film, but it's not always important as some of the ideas on display are genuinely horrifying, and definitely make for good horror viewing. The film was obviously shot on a low budget, as there's a very cheap look to it all; but as is the case with many trashy horror films, the low budget style actually elevates the sleaze value of the whole piece. The acting is decent enough, with Richard Basehart delivering a fine performance as the obsessed doctor at the centre of the tale, and receiving understated feedback from Gloria Grahame and Lance Henriksen. Michael Pataki's direction is solid, although the only feature film he directed after this one was an adult version of Cinderella, which I'd love to see. The ending is strong and provides a good climax for a film of this nature, and while overall the film isn't as good as it's main influence; Mansion of the Doomed is still a worthwhile seventies effort.

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.

This movie is pretty gruesome but almost has no gore or blood, instead by using some really gruesome topics (eyeball transplants),a good music score (though rather short and repetitive), and good acting (Basehart plays it straight) this is a good horror movie.Gloria Grahame, the late Grahame who was a big movie star at one point (like Basehart) is his helper as the good old Dr. Chaney (Basehart) looks for hapless victims to give their eyes for his daughter who went blind after an accident.His an accredited scientist who keeps misdoings a secret, and lures people he knows including another doctor (played by a young Lance Henriksen early in his movie career), a real estate agent and a prostitute to name a few.He is only trying to blow his ego by proclaiming new improvements in eye research which take a big nosedive when his daughter starts rejecting the eye donor transplants. Of course this doesn't stop the doctor from getting more victims.Of course that's another gruesome area as he doesn't kill them, after plucking out their eyes he "stores" them in his underground lab with other lab animals.These scenes were the most chilling and most effective as you see these people trying to get out but not having their eyes provides a big obstacle.The ending is pretty satisfying though, and the movie overall is good. I would check it out.