"A nightmare of blinding horror" pierces the Blu-ray format with the 88 Films' limited edition Blu-ray/DVD combo of Umberto Lenzi's giallo EYEBALL.

Eager to distance herself from her boss Mark (John Richardson, BLACK SUNDAY), with whom she is having an affair, until he can deal with his mentally unstable wife Alma (Marta May, HORROR STORY), secretary Paulette (Martine Brochard, PAPRIKA) joins a group of fellow Virginians on a bus tour of Spain guided by prank-playing Martinez (Raf Baldassarre, THE GREAT SILENCE). Among them are bickering couple Robby (Daniele Vargas, THE ARENA) and bitchy Gail Alvarado (Silvia Solar, CRIMSON), photographer Lisa (Mirta Miller, DR. JEKYLL AND THE WEREWOLF) and her lesbian lover/model Naiba (Ines Pellegrini, ARABIAN NIGHTS), cigar-chomping Hamilton (John Bartha, CANNIBAL FEROX) and his daughter Jenny (Verónica Miriel, THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI), the Randalls (THE KILLER WITH A THOUSAND EYES' Richard Kolin and Lenzi's wife Olga Pehar) and their teenage daughter Peggy (Olga Montes), and meek Reverend Bronson (Jorge Rigaud, THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS). While the group is wandering the markets of La Rambla, a young woman is brutally stabbed on her left eye gouged out. The tour group, along with Mark who has turned up out of nowhere in search of Paulette, seem to be unfortunate onlookers to the aftermath until one of their own is subsequently murdered and found with an eye missing in the funhouse at the Tibidabo amusement park; whereupon soon-to-retire Inspector Tudela (Andrés Mejuto, A BULLET FOR SANDOVAL) and his university-educated replacement Inspector Lara (José María Blanco, KILMA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE) are eying them as prime suspects. As more victims turn up wherever they go, the group members start to accuse each other, but Mark has reason to suspect that his own wife Alma might be in Barcelona and possibly responsible for the deaths which match the modus operandi of a crime that occurred in their home town of Burlington a year previous.

A late entry into the giallo genre around the time that Lenzi was also turning to the trendier Eurocrime genre with films like ALMOST HUMAN and VIOLENT NAPLES, EYEBALL's wackier elements (including the killer's past trauma) have overshadowed the fact that it is actually a diverting thriller in addition to being cheesy fun. There is a certain parodic aspect in the plotting with this group of very "American" tourists who are conveniently all from the same place in the United States with various connections to one another whose whereabouts manage to be unaccounted for during the crimes – including a later sequence where a couple of them have excuses for making trips back to Madrid from Sitges when another attempt is made on the life of a hospitalized victim – as well as the manner in which they carry on with the tour even as it appears evident that a crime is going to occur at each of their stops or the justification for the film's Italian title in a witness describing the red raincoated killer as looking "like a red cat" (which is surely no more ludicrous than James Franciscus describing the various disparate leads to a murder case as being "like a cat o' nine tails"). The mechanics of the plot actually remain sound, and the interplay between grizzled veteran cop Tudela and psychoanalytical Lara is balanced with Tudela's preference for logic over supposition and scientific testing actually prevents them for apprehending the killer earlier (although that is not apparent until one discovers the identity of the killer). The scope photography of Antonio Millán (THE SINISTER EYES OF DR. ORLOFF) is not always as striking as the Italian equivalents but the score of Bruno Nicolai (THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE) finds a balance between suspense and travelogue accompaniment. Brochard would later play a photographer who must be silenced after capturing something incriminating in Riccardo Freda's MURDER OBSESSION (which also featured Richardson).

Released theatrically in the United States by Joseph Brenner Associates – in some places as a double bill with SUSPIRIA – and on VHS in a painfully cropped edition by Prism Entertainment, EYEBALL was a long time coming to digital in English-speaking countries; however, American and British fans could avail themselves of an anamorphic copy from the German company Marketing Film with English and German dubs released in 2002 with the onscreen export title THE SECRET KILLER. Although long out of print, copies of the Marketing disc remained available and it was directly ported for X-Rated Kult Video's edition. The 4K HD remaster first turned upon German Blu-ray from X-Rated with no dub track but English subtitles and an English-language audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth. With no American edition in sight, 88 Film's Blu-ray/DVD combo from the same restoration is quite welcome as it is region free in spite of the B/2 coding on the back of the reversible cover and limited edition slipcover. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 widescreen encode reveals slivers of additional information on the sides of the frame. The skintones look a tad pink but the image is miles ahead of the DVD transfer which was bathed in a sickly yellow that frequently flattened detail even in the brightest exteriors. The English and Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono have also been remastered and cleaned up with the score coming through as strongly as the dubbed dialogue, and English subtitles are provided for the Italian track.

Extras start off with audio commentary by podcasters The Hysteria Continues who all greatly enjoy the film as a slasher precursor and the "last gasp of the giallo" (pre-Argento's TENEBRAE), as well as the "simplicity" of the title EYEBALL (along with Brenner retitlings TORSO and AUTOPSY). They demonstrate knowledge of the genre, noting that the early giallo paperbacks were actually Italian reprints of the likes of Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie and that the more salacious examples were homegrown paperback and magazine stories, and that – despite Lenzi's preference in discussing the giallo entries in his filmography – that he did not return to the genre after moving onto crime and horror films but he did write and publish a number of gialli novels in later years. They also discuss the plot and how it could be interpreted as a parody (which makes sense as it did come at a time when the move toward the Eurocrime genre resulted in some crossovers as well as some gialli with more comic relief).

“All Eyes on Lenzi: The Life and Times of the Exploitation Titan” (84:04) is a feature-length documentary featuring archival video interviews with Lenzi, Giovanni Lombardo Radice (CANNIBAL FEROX), and Danilo Mattei (IRONMASTER) intercut with comments from Calum Waddel and writer Rachel Nisbet, John Martin, Mikel Koven, Manilo Gomarasca, and Scooter McCrae contributing to an expansive overview of Lenzi's career. They all note his ability more so than other Italian jobbing directors to adapt to each of the genres in which he worked even though he was often seen as working on a lower tier than fellow jobbing Mario Bava whose was viewed as being able to turn anything he touched into gold. A quick discussion of his work in westerns and spy films leads to a lengthier look at his work in the giallo genre, and how his films distinguished themselves from those of Dario Argento from the steamy Carroll Baker ones to the post-Argento body counts like EYEBALL which might have been more of an influence on the American slasher (as well as on Lucio Fulci's NEW YORK RIPPER) or the unpredictable SPASMO. They move onto Lenzi's crime films, noting the mileage he got out of the contrasts between over-the-top Tomas Milian and bland Maurzio Merli, his mastery of suspenseful buildup and action sequences, and the ways in which his crime films drew more from the world of film noir in contrast to some of the genre's far-right, pro-police contemporaries. Discussion of the cannibal films contrasts MAN FROM DEEP RIVER – in which they note antecedents to the giallo genre than the influence of the mondo genre seen in JUNGLE HOLOCAUST and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST – with the back-to-back EATEN ALIVE! and CANNIBAL FEROX (which may not have been as deep as Deodato's film but was more successful and "fun"). Of Lenzi's later films, NIGHTMARE CITY gets the most-involved discussion, with Lenzi expressing his need to distinguish his entry from both the Romero films and Fulci's ZOMBIE with the nuclear contamination as the hook for its onslaught of gore. It becomes more difficult for contributors to defend films like GHOSTHOUSE, HITCHER IN THE DARK, NIGHTMARE BEACH, or BLACK DEMONS in which a jobbing director had less inspiration and even less of a budget.