Black Rainbow

Black Rainbow is like most of Mike Hodges films: Get Carter, Croupier and Terminal Man, very intelligent. It is great performance by

Rosanna Arquette best ever. Also Jason Robards and Tom Hulce are also good.

I doesn't rely on special effects to tell a story. It is more or less dealing with whether or not (Martha Travis) Rosanna Arquette is telling the truth. What I found interesting is how Hodges creates a psychological atmosphere on what would happen if someone with that psychic power tells you somebody close to you is dead. That is more disturbing than any special effect.

It is a shame Black Rainbow didn't get a proper cinema release. According to Mike Hodges on the DVD commentary of Black Rainbow, both the distributors Palace Pictures (UK) & Miramax (USA) were both suffering financially. Palace Pictures only released the in minimum cinemas, because they were on the verge of getting bankrupt. Miramax decided to release it straight to television.

My opinion is this is great film and should get a chance, any interested in this film, its out on DVD on Anchor Bay on Region 2

The script is filled with a series of chilling twists which Hodges plays with an absolute and certain confidence - the eeriness as Arquette's first vision starts to come, and her agitation and attempts to cover as what she is performing turns to real; the second vision where she reels off a list of names of the dead trying to contact the living and said people still alive in the audience start standing up puzzled. Hodges' depiction of a seedy con-job slowly becoming darker is beautifully written. The imagery as Arquette's vistas of heavenly meadows and tranquil afterlife cliches start to change into impressions of cancers, empty lives and of people suffering is a stunning and powerful one. The final soliloquy Arquette gives, coming out to taunt the audience - how they want there to be an afterlife so they can confirm their own lives, how if there wasn't an afterlife and what they had was all that they were given, then wouldn't that make her a fake ? - is superbly written and utterly rivetting in delivery. Arquette's performance in the film is exceptional.

I won't waste time repeating all the positive points other reviewers have made about this film.

Rosanna Arquette is absolutely stunning in the lead role. You can see why Martin Scorsese advised her to play the part, she's perfect.

The fact that Arrow have restored this little gem on Blu-Ray is a rare piece of good news in this terrible year of 2020.

Black Rainbow is a low-budget mystery with supernatural overtones, a rare genre that I'm particularly fond of. The sound and the picture quality on the print I saw was not great but was certainly watchable. I really enjoyed the premise: a fake psychic starts actually prophesizing people's deaths -- both the why and how -- which makes her a target for a hit man. Arquette is pretty good in the role -- kind of a mystical and ethereal nymphomaniac and Robards is great as always. The plot meanders a bit and sometimes gets a little slow, but I still enjoyed it. The ending didn't really make a lot of sense to me -- maybe I missed something earlier in the movie -- but I was surprised by this ending and liked it even if though it didn't seem to be supported by the rest of the movie.

This is not a film everyone would enjoy. It takes a poke at an old and established con game -- for want of a more precise term, fake mediumship -- and then stands it on its head.

Spoilers follow.

Before an audience in a mining town, Arquette's character tells various audience members of their losses, while the victims are still alive! She's proved to be wrong, and then, later, the persons die in the manner she describes. This happens more than once. Had she been a local lady, she might have been a murder suspect, or possibly hanged as a witch.

The story builds slowly, and each incident just throws another log on the fire, making the atmosphere murkier and more mysterious. The film opens ambiguously and ends the same way.

As noted before, not for every taste. But for those with the appropriate taste buds, the taste of this is rich and flavorful.