Blackout

Maxwell Reed, the tall dark, handsome hero, with the Robert Mitchum one liners and 'droopy' eyelids, does a reasonable job of playing the amateur sleuth in his attempt to find the masterminds of a smuggling racket. Reed's portrayal is a direct take from Mitchum's world weary and cynical anti hero, Jeff Bailey, in the film 'Out of the past.' As in so much American film noir of this period, to raise the level of fear and tension, moments of danger are enhanced the use of the camera which presents the main characters in twilight and shadowy situations. Reed's accent is a sort of 'mid Atlantic' and after a while frankly grates on the ears as it's neither one thing or another. His 'Mitchum' sleepwalking demeanour and his cynical quips are shamelessly copied from American film noir, but they seem out of place in 1950's London. It's as if the director is trying to inject some sparkle and excitement into the action. However, on hindsight, it may have been more appropriate to have simply cast a genuine American actor for the part. The film starts promisingly enough with a temporary blind Reed being assaulted and knocked out in an London flat. Reed's encounter with Dinah Sheridan, the sister of the pilot killed in air crash two years earlier, prompts him to pursue his attackers and find out what they were really trying to achieve. But half way through the film, the storyline begins to meander and hence lose its 'punch' and ends up becomes tedious. Eric Pohlmann as usual is excellent, playing the foreign villain, with solid support from Michael Brennan cast as the chief 'henchman.' However, Sheridan is largely a spare part, who seems to spend most of her time getting in and out of cars. There's no sexual chemistry or 'frisson' between her and Reed, thus rendering the relationship as 'flat' and frankly dull. Maxwell Reed reminds me of an early Roger Moore, an average actor who seems to get by with snappy one liners and good looks! Nevertheless, the film is worth a look.

Future Hammer House of Horror legend John Gilling wrote the serviceable script to this creepily crepuscular Brit-Noir about a temporarily blind protagonist Christopher (Maxwell Reed) who quite literally stumbles blindly onto a grisly murder scene, thereby excitingly auguring a lean, well-shot, garotte-tight B-thriller, endowed with a first rate, profoundly engrossing mystery, and the tall, handsomely rugged-looking, twin-fisted lead making for a suitably Stoic, hard-knock Noir hero, and the gripping, circuitously entertaining plot cascades amusingly to a thrill-packed, shadow-steeped, bullet-blastingly boisterous, excitingly staged foot chase at the film's agreeably noisome climax! And it would be greatly remiss to not mention the eye-catchingly vivid use of chiaroscuro lighting effects in the film's doom-laden interiors that rivals the painterly work of world-renowned 'Painting With Light' photographer John Alton.

Blackout is an excellent example of early 50s British crime thrillers. The unfairly neglected Maxwell Reed stars as Chris Pelly, a blind man who literally falls into a murder mystery. Pelly regains his sight after an operation and then sets about unraveling the aforementioned mystery. Forget the negative comments made about this film and about Maxwell Reed, it is an extremely entertaining film and Reed is very good as the wise-cracking hero. The producers of this film went on to produce Roger Moore's series The Saint and this film is almost like a dry run for that production. Reed lacks Moore's charisma, but he has a nice way with the one-liners and he looks good, always a bonus in films such as these. Blackout is available on DVD and is worth a few quid of anyone's money. Several other Maxwell Reed films are now also available on DVD and some of them are really good .... There Is Another Sun, Daughter Of Darkness, The Square Ring and Marilyn and all highly recommended.

For this period, late forties and early fifties, this kind of topic, very short, was rather interesting. Robert Baker gave it to us, among other exciting thrillers: JACK THE RIPPER, SIEGE OF SIDNEY STREET...So this one is good, no problem, taut, but if you wait a bit and watch WAIT UNTIL DARK, made in 1967, you'll quickly see the difference between those two movies. The 1967 film directed by Terence Young and also speaking of a blind lead character - Audrey Hepburn - is far far better than this one. And Henry Hathaway's 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET...But don't get discouraged, watch this one, this pretty agreeable British gem.

A blind man stumps by mistake into a murder and, as he doesn't know who, why or where, nobody believes him. The premise is interesting, but from there on the film spirals down and rapidly acquires a US made Republic Serial flavor, where the hero is again and again stupidly putting himself in trouble with the baddies but luckily --as the baddies aren't that clever either-- saving his neck every time. The hero breaks and enters and breaks and enters, and he is so lucky --did I mention he is lucky?-- that he not only survives but twice he easily finds decisive clues that the baddies --did I mention they weren't clever?-- left carelessly around for him to find. Everything but going to the police; obviously, that would be too absurd. We all know that amateur detectives are always much more competent than Scotland Yard's trained detectives. To help, all the time Reed is walking around with a marmoreal face that seems to scream: "look how handsome I am". Perhaps to compensate all his beauty, the female lead is quite plain and, in the final take, she looks downright ugly. I had much higher expectations, especially being this a British film. (Perhaps I was so predisposed because the most recent British film of that era I watched was "Obsession"... and that is entirely another matter.)