McGregor is a surveillance specialist who's dogged by memories of his absent daughter, and Judd is the young lovely at the other end of his telescope (displaying more of her body than she'll ever have to again) who becomes his surrogate child. Judd's character has a problem with human relationships -- she has a habit of gettin' all sexy with men and then killing them. Yes, this lends camp value to the film, but not as much as you'd hope. For the most part, it's remarkably sober -- that's a problem, since poor director Stephan Elliott has no idea at all how to put this psychobabble across.

So Eye of the Beholder muddles unevenly from scene to scene with nary a stylistic fluorish nor even a sidelong wink in sight. It gets more unpleasant as it goes along -- late in the film, Jason Priestley shows up as a sociopath who beats on Judd and shoots her full of drugs, no doubt alienating the handful of viewers who may still have something invested in this narrative. Things end, badly, in the snow near an isolated Alaskan diner.

Still, none of the audience members walked out prematurely from the opening-night screening I attended. If Eye of the Beholder remains watchable, it's due to Judd's instinctive screen presence (the usually ingratiating McGregor mostly murmurs indistinctly, like he has the flu). She's very fetching up there, plugging away like a pro despite what she must have realized at some point was a hopeless situation.