White of the Eye 1987

A chilling serial-killer mystery unfolds in Globe, Arizona, where a string of murders targeting wealthy young women draws the gaze of a diligent detectives’ squad and an unlikely suspect with a troubling past. Joan White, Cathy Moriarty, is married to Paul White, David Keith, a skilled sound engineer whose quiet exterior masks a deeply unsettling temperament. Paul’s world is a carefully engineered soundscape—he can make noises echo through the air cavities in his head and guide where the speakers’ voices should come from in a room. This eerie talent becomes a disturbing clue as the killings mount, and the investigation narrows toward the couple’s circle.

From the outset, the trail to Paul is reinforced at the police station, where Mendoza’s partner Phil has unearthed Paul’s criminal past. Art Evans brings to life Detective Charles Mendoza, whose methodical approach and keen ear for the killer’s MO slowly peel back the layers of deceit. The case grows more personal as flashbacks reveal Joan’s earlier entanglement with Mike DeSantos, a former lover who once joined Paul and Joan on the road from New York to Malibu. Mike, played by Alan Rosenberg, is not merely a romantic rival; a past shared with Paul adds a menacing dimension to the present crisis.

In their recollections, Mike and Paul undertake a deer hunting trip that reveals a chilling facet of Paul’s psyche. After Paul shoots a deer, he mutilates it in a shocking display of violence, a moment that hints at a darker, almost ritualistic temperament that contrasts with his polished, professional exterior. The tension between Paul and Mike escalates when Mike catches Paul and Joan together, a discovery that fuels fear and jealousy and plants seeds of suspicion that never fully go away.

Back in the present, the story shifts between Joan’s precarious safety and Paul’s unsettling routines. When Joan stops in a gas station en route to Stope’s Creek, she unexpectedly encounters Mike, who claims to have been in prison and to possess a troubling gift: the ability to glimpse elements of the past and the future after a serious head injury. Mike’s eerie insight adds a layer of prophecy to the narrative, and he pleads with Joan to keep what she knows about Mike’s condition from Paul.

Joan’s instincts warn her that Paul may be having an affair with Ann Mason, a socialite whose seemingly perfect life hides a web of secrets. She soon discovers Paul’s truck behind her house, a finding that leads her to retaliate by flattening its tires—an act that inadvertently shields Paul by providing him with a momentary alibi for the latest murder in the sequence.

The killer’s modus operandi becomes devastatingly explicit in a brutal bathroom scene: he grabs the victim, pounds her into the floor, and then ties her up with twine before drowning her in the bathtub. The crime scene is chillingly clinical, and Joan’s world starts to unravel as she discovers something grotesque beneath the bathroom’s inlaid soap-dish—plastic bags containing body parts. The revelation shatters the façade of normalcy surrounding the couple and forces Joan to confront the unbearable truth about Paul: he claims to have been “chosen” to put women “out of their misery,” insisting that his love for Joan somehow makes his actions righteous.

Joan’s mounting distrust drives her into a dangerous confrontation with Paul, culminating in him locking her in the attic. He dons an explosive vest and paints his face, a symbolic masquerade that signals a descent into madness. The danger extends to their daughter Danielle, whom Joan must protect as Paul, now increasingly unhinged, hunts her through the family’s surroundings. In a brutal chase through an abandoned quarry, Paul shoots toward his target while taunting Joan with his twisted philosophy about life and death.

The showdown reaches a fever pitch as Mike—now staying at the quarry with a machine gun—reads Paul’s every move. In a dramatic, final moment, Paul executes the signature sound that has marked his killings, savoring the echo in the empty rooms around him. He lights the fuse on his vest with a lighter, confident that his philosophy will prevail. Mike returns fire, and Joan dives into the quarry lake as chaos erupts. Both Paul and Mike die in a hail of gunfire and unintended explosion, ending the immediate threat.

In the aftermath, Joan is reunited with Danielle, and she discusses the decade of fear, manipulation, and suspicion she endured with Detective Mendoza. The case leaves her pondering the distance between love and control, and the shadow Paul cast over ten years of her life. The final scene hints at the enduring trauma of the past, even as justice is served in the rugged, sunlit landscape of Globe, Arizona.

This story weaves together the haunting sounds Paul creates, the chilling violence that hides behind a veneer of respectability, and the fragile bonds of a family trying to survive a man whose intellect and charm mask a deadly, nihilistic resolve.