BLIND DATE

1984/USA/103 Minutes

Tagline-  The ultimate hi-tech thriller.

Description-

"A man goes blind trying to remember his girlfriend" goes the IMDB description. Rather the movie is about an obsessed man playing 'peeping tom' and stalking his institutionalized ex-girlfriend's look-alike, who later loses his eyesight on being chased by the girl's angry boyfriend.

'Blind Date' is a tepid thriller that delivers 90 minutes of melodrama and a half-cooked tale of romance and obsession, rather than any genuine thrills. Jonathan is an American working in Athens as an advertising executive; he has a hot secretary Claire as a devoted girlfriend, a job which allows him to ogle at hundreds of gorgeous models during swimsuit shoots, and a 'body double' of his ex-girlfriend whose house he conveniently breaks into whenever he wants. He is a creep and an opportunist, and as such the character evokes no sense of sympathy for the situations he lands up into. I actually wonder why a sweet and caring girl like Claire (played by Kirstie Allie) would want to stand up to a womanizing and insensitive guy like Jonathan. But then love is blind, right?

Meanwhile in the city, a maniac is killing women by cutting them up with surgical precision. He first attacks these women at their apartments, sedates them, and then makes them watch the decapitation of their own bodies.

One fine night, while spying on the body double, Jonathan is given a run by her enraged boyfriend and loses his eyesight on hitting a tree. The doctors cannot explain his situation, except that it was probably induced by stress (at seeing the resurrection of his 'lost girlfriend'). After this, an experimental scientist implants a visual stimulant 'microchip' in his brain, which allows perceiving objects through grids and lines (as in a computer projected 3D image). Jonathan then spends his time feeding computer game signals into his brain via a walkman type device which helps him in recognising objects, learning to cross roads, getting intimately acquainted with the 'lost' girlfriend by studying her curves while she sleeps at night etc. On one of his slightly surreptitious outings (his girlfriend does not appreciate a blind man walking alone), he 'sees' and hears a cab with a bad engine going near a block of apartments; some time after, a woman screams from the same place. Jonathan rushes in and comes face to face with the killer, the surgical killer, and manages to run to the rooftop where he has a narrow escape after police sirens scare the killer away.

Jonathan then traces the killer to Rachel's (the body double) apartment and engages in a cat and mouse game with him, culminating in the killer's grisly end.

The pacing of the movie is a major put off, as it takes ages for the suspense sequences to kick in; and it is fleeting when they finally do.  In three-fourth of the running time, there is a parallel drawn between Jonathan's dubious activities and the killer, with no point to connect the two. Thereafter, the blind protagonist bumps into the crazy killer right outside a crime scene and can only recall a human shape in the vaguest form, and a taxi with a screeching sound. However within minutes, he has actually traced the killer to Rachel with foresight that is inexplicable, considering that the character is mostly daft and inept in the first 70 minutes. The music is typical soapy romantic stuff of the 80's and thankfully minimal, while the character development is mostly superficial and sketchy, except for Kristen who is far more sympathetic than Jonathan deserves. Even for entertainment purposes, the movie falls flat at every level.

it is an interesting idea poorly executed, and it would have been much better if the 'chance meeting' between Jonathan and the killer had taken place earlier so that the former would have been on track of the killer sooner, and hence the end result more credible. Also, the sci-fi element boasted by the movie poster and advertisements is a mere gimmick, as the supposed high tech viewing equipment is very rudimentary, and at the very best it confuses our 'poor' Jonathan into wondering about what he had really seen (of course he got a brilliant brainwave afterwards !).

The movie has been released on Blu-Ray by boutique label Scorpion Releasing in 2018. The video is touted to be a 4K scan of the original negative, and while details and clarity are generally sharp, the picture does dip into softness here and there. Skin tones are neutral and balanced, while the 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack is adequate. However, while dialogue exchanges are generally audible, the sound effects are a bit screechy. English subtitles have been provided, and extras include a theatrical trailer, the slightly longer theatrical cut in SD, still gallery, and a brief look into the career of the director Niko Mastorakis.

American Tiger/American Rickshaw

(original italian title-American Riscio’)

1990/Italy/93 minutes

Tagline-The way which is a way, is not the ordinary way.(apparently some line by Confucius)

One of the most bizarre horror/action/mystery films that I've come across, this one involves a perplexing mix of Asian witches, ancient magic with sinister warthog statutes that can be either applied to good effect (gaining immortality and eternal youth) or bad effect (a pact with Satan for instance), voyeurism, evil televangelists, olympic gymnansts, strippers, creepy cats with bells around their necks, serpents, Chinese talismans and more. Phew !

A college student in Miami (Scott Edwards played by Olympic gymnast Mitchell Gaylord) works part time as a rickshaw puller to earn a few bucks and support himself and his invalid friend, who together share a moth eaten apartment in a decrepit building.  During one of his nocturnal stints, Scott is hired by a hot stripper who takes him to a harbour and then seduces him (extra payment for the rickshaw ride !) However, it turns out that she was hired to play a role in a porno film shot by respected televangelist Reverend Mormon’s son who is a 'peeping tom'. Once Scott finds out, all hell breaks out as he smashes the poor guy Jason around, beats him blue, leaves the place in a wreck and then runs away with the wrong video cassette (back in the 90's, there were those bulky tapes for home entertainment). Despite using all gymnast skills he possesses, Scott loses both the real tape and the stripper, who runs away amidst the confusion !

Back at his apartment, Scott discovers the switched tape in which the creep Jason is blabbering about some key around his neck which Scott had earlier during the struggle thrown into the water. He rushes back to recover the sex tape and instead finds Jason dead, his face stuffed into a toilet seat and his mouth full of bloodied toilet roll. Just as he is about to clear his own blood and prints, the boat bursts into flame and Scott dives into the water, thus saving his ass in time ! Parallelly, a massive thug called Francis gets hold of the sex tape featuring Scott and gets furious, as he was really after the key around Jason's neck or the tape disclosing its whereabouts, which is now in Scott's possession. He is the murderer of Jason, and has been hired by the father (Rev. Mortem) to kill the son and get the key, which is the key to the warthog whose power cannot be under-estimated.

Anyway, after a few run-ins with the thug, during which Scott and the stripper Joanna become lovers (though she always gives him the slip !), the key finds its way to the televangelist who sends his henchman to retrieve the statue (a really ugly one if you ask me). Scott's friend is killed by the thug and he sneaks into his now-burnt apartment (it caught fire similar to the boat, a phenomena linked to the supernatural powers of the Asian witch Madame Luna who was helped by Scott earlier in the film) to get a chinese talisman given by the mentioned Madame Luna. This leads him, through the precious help of shimmery white eyed cats, to the luxurious den of the lady. Here she tells him that she has been watching him since birth, because he has been chosen to return the warthog to its original resting place, as he was born on 6th June 1966 (6-6-66, inverted form of 9999, which according to ancient Chinese folklore signifies the return of the talisman symbol to the celestial sphere in the year of the tiger, and that a person born on such date would get her the warthog back). Anyway, both Scott and Jason were born on same date and year, however the latter proved weak and thus Madame Luna had enlisted the help of Joanna and Scott to get her beloved statue back.

Apparently in young days, Madame Luna had fallen under the spell of Mortem who used her to steal the statue and thus become the Devil himself ! Now she wants to get it back and restore the balance in the world and her own youth of course (now which is more selfish, being the Devil for power, or staying young and immortal ?) Anyway, the stripper returns to Scott's life as the guardian angel, and together they whisk the statue into the hands of the divine old witch, who proceeds to become young again ! She then reprimands Rev. Mortem through live telecast (how did that happen ??) and exposes his crimes, upon which his long suffering wife shoots him dead. Out of the dead body, the hideous shape of the devil is revealed, shocking the devout followers who feasted upon each word of the sanctimonious televangelist. Rev. Mortem is played by none other than the versatile Donald Pleasance, who probably tired of the Halloween franchise, thought that giving sermons from a pulpit about 'our Good Lord' and his 'divine grace' was a desirable change.

A lunatic caper of a movie, it defies being placed under any particular genre or subject-matter. It suffers from an improbable story and characterisations. The motives of the stripper are suspect to begin with, I mean why does she abandon Scott at every dangerous situation if she liked him even remotely ?  The thug is a mystery- if he wanted the key, why kill the man who carried it and instead search for a terrible video cassette where Jason was showing off the key ? Scott forgets his dead buddy as soon as he gets to bed Joanna; why does Madame Luna keep so many snakes and cats, and if she was really that powerful, she could have got the warthog long back instead of getting a ‘man from the other side’ to physically wrench it from the possession of the evil Rev. Mortem ? If Mortem stole the warthog and stored it in a government facility (hahaha), then how did he lose the key; if at all it came into possession of the son, he could have pressurised him to get it back instead of hiring a henchman to finish him off ! Also, why on earth didn't Madame Luna call Scott directly and issue directions, instead of running him around and causing his ass to be fried twice !?

The film has numerous wtf moments that left me scratching my head in bewilderment. The creators attempted making a heady cocktail of variety of strange stuff, but the end result isn’t well blended, and is rather sloppy and inconsistent. The several sub-plots seem unconnected except that they're all meant to be conspiracies around poor Jake's life, just because he was born in the year of the tiger. Speaking of tigers, Jake seems to know his fate because he wears a shirt sporting a tiger throughout (maybe a coincidence if it was the only shirt available within the budget). The acting is bad here too, Scott is wooden faced and unperturbed throughout, Victoria Prouty as the stripper is dull and expressionless, and the thug has a wince inducing smirk throughout the delirious proceedings. But it retains a certain offbeat charm, endearing in its sheer stupidity. There are certainly no movies being made like this anymore.  Definitely worth a worth for all trash film aficionados.

Interestingly, this is directed by the great Sergio Martino who went on to establish himself in giallo films during their heydays in the 1970’s with solid entries like 'All the Colours of the Dark', 'The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh' etc.

PS- Rickshaws and tigers have minimal importance in the film.