The Man With Icy Eyes
"'Icy' doesn't have a color. That's the beauty of it. Understand?"
After a former New Mexico state senator is shot one night outside his home and his briefcase is stolen, the police pick up Carlos Valdes (uncredited), a Mexican laborer who happened to be nearby. Newspaper reporter Eddie Mills (Antonio Sabato) is covering the case and believes that the facts, as presented by the prosecution, don't add up. But Carlos is convicted and sentenced to death, largely based on the testimony of Anne Saxe (Barbara Bouchet), a nude model who claims to have seen Carlos dump the briefcase into a car driven by a mysterious accomplice with cold, gray eyes. As Eddie digs deeper into the case, he is repeatedly thwarted and harassed by a gang of hooligans, his own editor, and by Isaac Thetman (Corrado Gaipa), a local politico and believer in astrology, who repeatedly predicts that Eddie will die before Carlos is sent to the gas chamber. When witnesses start getting killed off, it seems that Isaac's predictions are coming true. Now, Eddie must race to find the truth before Carlos is executed.
The Man with Icy Eyes (not to be confused with Eyes of Crystal) is a cool little noir-inspired thriller where a lone detective pursues a seemingly simple case that spins into a larger conspiracy. He even falls for a beautiful but dangerous woman with mysterious motives. Setting and filming an Italian movie in New Mexico is a novel twist, but it results in some amusing culture shock. For example, Americans usually don't hang out at outdoor cafés the way Italians do. Especially in the winter.
Eddie is in a downtown hotel at 11pm when he realizes that he must stop the execution scheduled at midnight. Within that one hour, he manages to schedule meetings with two witnesses, find and lose Anne, meet with his editor, get in a fight with the hooligans, drive out to the penitentiary for a meeting with Carlos, drive back to the city, threaten a witness, find Anne again, and take her back out to the penitentiary to give her testimony.
Fashion Moment
Eddie's leather jacket is really cool, especially paired with a mock turtleneck. John's vest is also really nice.
But check out the boss's secretary at the Albuquerque Sentinel.
Voom! A spiraling column of black and gray! That hairdo must take hours of maintenance.
- Faith Domergue, who plays Carlos's wife, became famous in 1950's sci-fi B movies like This Island Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and The Atomic Man.
- Victor Buono (who plays Eddie's racist boss, John Hammond) is one of those "that guy" actors who showed up in small roles in everything in the 60's and 70's from TV's Batman and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to Beneath the Planet of the Apes and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Eddie is in a downtown hotel at 11pm when he realizes that he must stop the execution scheduled at midnight. Within that one hour, he manages to schedule meetings with two witnesses, find and lose Anne, meet with his editor, get in a fight with the hooligans, drive out to the penitentiary for a meeting with Carlos, drive back to the city, threaten a witness, find Anne again, and take her back out to the penitentiary to give her testimony.
Fashion Moment
Eddie's leather jacket is really cool, especially paired with a mock turtleneck. John's vest is also really nice.
But check out the boss's secretary at the Albuquerque Sentinel.
Voom! A spiraling column of black and gray! That hairdo must take hours of maintenance.
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