Blackout

It starts out very promising with a bland blind man walking towards a moving camera and thinking out his rather wooden thoughts but the viewer is quickly undeceived – it's another low budget film from Baker & Berman. This is proto-Saint, except it has robotic Maxwell Reed playing a cold hard-boiled engineer unable to mind his own business. Along with his fanatical sleuthing he also shared a high-rise coiffure with Roger Moore.

When blind he's a er witness to a murder, after his sight is restored he's eventually convinced he actually did stumble across a foul deed and goes on a convoluted chase after the baddies. And there turns out to be a lot of 'em too, the film gets littered with corpses of the murdered variety. Outside of Leslie Charteris and Peter Cheyney this is the kind of thing Americans always did best, seventy years later gunplay is still pretty rare in the UK…so far. Also they were always better at B films too, British B films merely looked like they were made by children. And Americans will always be better at American accents. At least Dinah Sheridan was in here as dependable as ever as the hero's backup, while there are so many other familiar faces at their day jobs too – crusty Kynaston Reeves, sweaty Eric Pohlmann, lumpy Michael Brennan, and Patric Doonan, Campbell Singer to name a few. As well as the vanished faces and morals a vanished Britain is also beautifully on display, with some occasionally nice photography. But is the film any good? Well no, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Could I recommend it to anyone? Well no, but hopefully I'll watch it again sometime just to make sure.

I found BLACKOUT to be a routinely-plotted thriller with an interesting storyline. The only problem with it is that it's hampered by a relatively low budget which means there are few memorable set-pieces or exciting moments to distinguish it from other fare. It was put out by the Baker/Berman team at Tempean Films, with Baker himself directing from a script by John Gilling (who apparently never slept during this stage of his career).

The film boasts a great opening sequence which is the definite highlight. Maxwell Reed (THE CLOUDED YELLOW), suffering from temporary blindness, ends up at the wrong address and literally stumbles upon a recently-deceased corpse. You have no idea how this same scenario was used time and again in British B-films but that's because it's a good one. The murderers are still on the scene but, learning of his disability, decide to let him live. He's discovered the next day but of course the police don't believe his story and there's no trace of the murder.

Sadly the film shifts down a gear after this point. Reed regains his sight and becomes the ordinary amateur detective, trying to solve the murder and bring down the criminal gang. I would have preferred him to remain blind throughout and have Dinah Sheridan's love interest acting as his eyes as this would have made for a more unusual and thrilling production. I suppose that would have been too outside the box. Still, the running time is short and the pace is fast, both of which are good things, and the requisite twists and turns of the plot keep you watching.

There's a nice little set-piece in a posh apartment complex involving the concierge, Reed breaking into a room to commit a robbery, and a couple of thugs on his tail. It plays out very nicely. BLACKOUT also benefits from a decent cast. Reed isn't my favourite leading man from this period but he's decent enough here. Sheridan is as classy as ever. Kynaston Reeves plays a crotchety old fellow while Annette Simmonds is an effective gangster's moll-type character. Eric Pohlmann is the slimy villain and the great but underrated Michael Brennan his brutal thug. Ronald Leigh-Hunt and Michael Balfour have cameos, but although Sam Kydd is listed on the IMDb cast page, I failed to spot him this time.

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.

Thanks to some new channels on satellite we are now able to view again many British crime thrillers from the 40s and 50s which were last shown on BBC or ITV about 30 years ago.What is often most interesting about these films is the location shots,so that you can compare London of that era with the London of today.The film is full of actors familiar from that period,including one of my favourite actors of that time Eric Pohleman.He really was a superb villain.The fact that he had a continental accent meant that this made him sound even more sinister to the post war audiences.Also featured is Michael Brennan who must have beaten up more leading men than he had hot dinners.Kynaston Reeves who usually played Judges has a longer part than usual.In all a reasonably entertaining thriller

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.