Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Folk horror: Eye of the Devil (1966)

Sharon Tate was so beautiful it hurts.
Which is stating the obvious, but there’s nothing wrong with it. Her fame rests on her beauty, on a handful of movies and on her tragic death at the hands of Charles Manson’s cultists.

Tate’s screen debut was slated to be Eye of the Devil, a small black and white occult/folk horror with a stellar cast: Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Donald Pleasence, David Hemmings. The lead female role should have been covered by Kim Novak, but the actress had a riding accident early on in the filming, and was replaced. Or maybe she was replaced because she fought with director J. Lee Thompson, and/or because she had had an on-set affair with Hemmings.

It was, all things considered, a very troubled production: change of leading lady, three directors stepping in and then out, at least a major rewrite of the script, a change of title (the movie was originally to be called 13) then the movie shelved for over one year.

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