“Dad's wearing a bunch of hotdogs.”

Remember that film from the late 80s where Meryl Streep (or was it Kathleen Turner?), Patrick Swayze and Billy-Bob Thornton were involved in a spate of desert-bound serial killings? You do? Well. Prepare to be amazed.

Because what you’re thinking about is White Of The Eye. And guess what? Somehow, it’s a British horror film.

And also… you’re misremembering. Because although the cast look a bit like the above-named Hollywood alumni, it’s not them. This is a proper mind-messer, isn’t it? American serial-killer story set very much in the middle of Texas. But British. Vaguely familiar-looking American cast. But not.

We’re through the looking glass here, people.

Given the singular lack of anything remotely British in this film (apart from an old penny which is a sort-of plot point), I thought I’d break with tradition and actually do a bit of genuine research ahead of writing this review. But all I can glean is a kind of collective shrug and a “yup, it’s British”. Thanks a lot, Wikipedia and IMDB.

Director Donald Cammell was British, of course - and responsible for the equally fancy and peculiar Performance.

And fancy White Of The Eye certainly is - an arthouse riot of cross-cutting, fragmented timelines and close-ups on eyes. The opening murder is a masterclass in extremes, and also the most 80s thing ever, as the victim gets her head smashed into a microwave oven before anything and everything that is red and some sort of liquid gets messily but artfully sprayed around her kitchen/diner as she fails to fight off her attacker.

The police investigate and deduce there may be something ritualistic about the way the dismembered body and its parts have been arranged.Suspicion immediately falls on hi-fi audio and satellite TV guru Paul White (David Keith). The tyres on his truck match tracks left at the scene, and apparently they are as good as fingerprints.

In flashback we learn about how Paul met his wife Joan (Cathy Moriarty), a girl with a dodgy past who has now carved out a life as a dutiful mom. When they met Joan was hooked up with a gun-toting city boy named Mike DeSantos (Alan Rosenberg). The couple were on their way to LA when hot-headed Joan decided to stub her cigarette out in Mike’s beloved 8-Track tape player. He poured soda in to stop it bursting into flames and they needed an audio technician. Hello, Paul.

And after a fraught hunting expedition with Paul, goodbye Mike. Although he’s still hanging around the town (make a note of this, it’s important later on).

As the murders continue and Paul is never seemingly too far away from the action (those rich attractive serial-killer-bait ladies do like their fancy A/V systems), the film drip-feeds us the trio’s interlinked past.

Then everything goes nuts and the screen is full of enormous machine guns, explosives and huge pick-up trucks bouncing through the desert. This being America and not Britain.

White Of The Eye isn’t exactly an effective whodunnit, but it is a feast for the (whites of the) eyes and always entertaining. However, it’s possibly the most outiest outlier I’ve yet included on this British horror films website. In the main, if a film looks British and has British people in it, I’ll give it a review, whoever paid for the thing. It doesn’t even need to be “full horror”. But the other way around, when British money and talent is very much in the background, does feel a bit of a stretch.