Films That Witness Madness

review

BLACKOUT

You know you're in trouble when the top-billed actors in a movie consist of two has-beens - Ray Milland and June Allyson - and two never-weres - Jim Mitchum and Belinda Montgomery. It's also time to run for the hills when the lead villain is played by Robert Carradine. But, if you've got the cajones like yours truly, you just sit back, cross your fingers and hope it doesn't hurt too bad. BLACKOUT is a Canadian thriller that doesn't thrill. Utterly unconvincing and terribly acted, the only thing this little film does is teach you the value of good casting. Every single role is miscast. For example, instead of getting a Jewish actor to play a Jewish man, they simply got an actor and said "now act Jewish". Every single character is a caricature and the constant mugging and stereotyping does little to alleviate the absolute boredom of the narrative.

A few years before ALONE IN THE DARK dumped four nutjobs out in society during a power outage, BLACKOUT did the same. Four psychos, led by Robert Carradine, escape from police custody during an all-out black out in New York City. They seek refuge in an apartment complex, going from room to room causing carnage, while a lone police officer, played by Jim Mitchum, hunts them down. Belinda Montgomery, best known for playing Doogie Howser's mom, is raped by one of the escapees but quickly comes to her senses and helps our hero get the job done. There's also a woman whose husband is on a ventilator, a young pregnant woman, a gaggle of kids, two obnoxious assholes stuck in a elevator, various rich old people, and a Jewish couple attending a big, loud Greek wedding - you'll love the unibrows. All of them will, in one way or another, be terrorized and/or murdered in cold blood but you won't care.

This is one of the worst acted films you're likely to see. No one seems even remotely interested. Only Robert Carradine manages to elicit any sort of emotional response but it's all for naught as no one in their right mind would be intimidated by Robert Carradine. He could be carrying a fucking rocket-propelled grenade and a severed head and that still wouldn't happen. Jim Mitchum has none of his dad's charisma or talent and spends the whole movie with a single bored expression on his face. Ray Milland - how the mighty have fallen - does some good work in his five minutes of screen time but he's the sole exception. Everyone else fails and it destroys what could have been a taut little thriller.

It doesn't help that the director is Eddy Matalon, either. Having seen HOTEL OF FREE LOVE and TEENAGE TEASERS before, I knew I wasn't in for some pretty framing or creative camera work but his direction here is so passive and mundane that it makes the whole film look and feel like an NBC Movie of the Week - from back when such a thing existed. But I'm not sure even Dario Argento could have done anything with this cast. Those looking for a little bit of violence and nudity shouldn't even bother as this film has neither. The only saving grace is the climatic chase in the apartment's multi-level parking garage, a genuinely exciting piece of film that does not deserve to be attached to the awful first 70 minutes of BLACKOUT. Do yourself a favor and skip BLACKOUT and grab ALONE IN THE DARK instead. You'll be a better person for it.

Terrible.

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