What Big Eyes

It's not often that we just go bonkers over an actor's portrayal in a film, but Patrick Magee's performance in What Big Eyes in our humble opinion is one of the finest acting jobs by an actor in a horror film that we've ever seen in the more than three-and-a-half decades of Sinister Cinema. He is AMAZING. An RSPCA officer is horrified when he discovers that pet shop owner Magee has been receiving and conducting bizarre experiments on wolves, searching for proof of lycanthropy in humans. His guinea pig? Himself. Like Lugosi in The Raven or Rathbone in Love from a Stranger, there are moments where the intensity of Magee's dialogue will pass right through the TV screen and creep down into your spine. Wow! Everyone else in the cast excels as well, especially Madge Ryan as his mentally battered daughter. The final scene in this short British made-for-TV feature is very memorable.

• horror