LEARNING TO DIE

Les yeux de la terreur had little going for it except Rachel Ward.

Les yeux de la terreur, aka, Terror Eyes is an unremarkable little thriller about a serial decapitator on a college campus. It isn’t very scary, and it isn’t very entertaining, despite its deliberate resemblance to classic Italian giallo. But opinions vary, and as you can see by looking at the above poster, it won the Jury Prize at the 1981 Avoriaz Film Festival, which goes to show that horror fans are so desperate for anything that resembles art they’ll hear Edith Piaf in a victim’s screams and see Jackson Pollack in his blood splatters.

But one thing you don’t have to look very hard for here is British bombshell Rachel Ward in her first film appearance. She would later star in the quirky but satisfying neo noir Sharky’s Machine, the somewhat less satisfying noir rehash Against All Odds, the noir send-up Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and the excellent modern Aussie noir After Dark My Sweet.

That’s a lot of noir, which is why she’s a favorite actress around here. As a side note, she gave an interview a while back in which she confessed that as a result of aging a bit and losing some of her extraordinary physical beauty, she wished she’d done more nude scenes. Funny, we were thinking the same thing. Les yeux de la terreur—which would later become known in the U.S. not as Terror Eyes, but as Night School—premiered at Avoriaz in January, and in Paris today in 1981.

France, Britain, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, Les yeux de la terreur, Terror Eyes, Night School, Sharky's Machine, After Dark My Sweet, Rachel Ward, poster art, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.

February 8

1969—Allende Meteorite Falls in Mexico

The Allende Meteorite, the largest object of its type ever found, falls in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The original stone, traveling at more than ten miles per second and leaving a brilliant streak across the sky, is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile. But by the time it hit the Earth it had broken into hundreds of fragments.