Casei-me com a Morte

Yes the cited user makes a brave attempt to explain this crime drama plot filmed in London in 1954.I was familiar with Dane Clark after watching him in "Highly Dangerous" (1950) with Margaret Lockwood and the actor who played the lawyer by watching "Angels One Five" when he played a fighter squadron leader in a very different role.Of course the tragic actress Belinda Lee (1936-1961) was not long on this earth losing her life in a motor accident in the US but she provides the film with the necessary eye candy.

Obviously the producers were influenced by American Film Noirs of the 1940s e.g. "The Big Sleep" and make a matching brave attempt at this sort of drama for the Uk market.Incidentally I heard that 1954 was the most unremarkable year in recent history when nothing much happened of shattering world importance!I rated it 6/10 along with the IMDb.com average rating.

This is a little British murder mystery, not a noir. The main character is a nice shlub, not a tough guy. There is very little tension or menace and certainly not any cynicism or existential despair. The dialog and bits of business are pretty funny and practically everyone in the film, including the villain, seems basically likable. Dane Clark does a very good job, although he will go on to do better. The plot offers a steady diet of red herring, but plot is not this film's strong suit. The whole thing is so likable that you may find yourself cringing that the plot and twists and turns seem so aimless and gratuitous, but it doesn't pretend to be more than a grade B movie with some good acting and good dialog.

Although these dozen or so pre-horror Hammer noir films of the early 50s are largely forgotten, they are making something of a comeback through TCM and other vintage film outlets. Of these, 'Blackout' is definitely the best of them.

It's well acted and (despite complaints here about the convoluted plot) well written with plenty of humour. Obviously the producers had to struggle with a low budget that inevitably compromised its production values, but the film makes the most of what it had. Still, it's a treat for Dane Clark fans and those who can see an unrealised talent in Belinda Lee before dying far too young. Their on-screen chemistry is terrific and so are Clark's scenes with Eleanor Summerfield (one of my favourite British supporting actors).

One of 'Blackout's most interesting elements is that, unlike most film noirs, that usually involve male protagonists with a token femme fatale, the plot of 'Blackout' is mostly female-driven.

While interesting for the footage of London circa 1954, this is an absurd movie. The story line is almost impossible to follow. There's almost no dramatic tension. The situations and supposed relationships are so unrealistic that even willing suspension of disbelief doesn't work. The protagonist is gullible and hard to swallow as a supposed tough guy when he spends so much time playing the fool to beautiful women and whimpering like a small boy to his mother, etc. And to top it off, it really doesn't strike me as a film noir at all, just a confusing murder mystery. The best thing about it is Belinda Lee, previously unknown to me, a beautiful woman who was killed a few years later, at 26, in a California car accident.

As was common in the fifties, a jobbing American B-lister was brought over to add a bit of box office to a mid-budget British crime thriller. This time it was Dane Clark who portrays the down at heel "Morrow". In a bar he meets the glamorous "Phyllis Brunner" (Belinda Lee) who gets him a bit drunk then offers him £500 to marry her. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he acquiesces to this perfectly reasonable demand from a women he had known for four hours (?!) but gets quite a shock when he wakes up next day, somewhat thick headed, in an artist's studio covered in blood. Whose blood? It does not take him long to discover that his brand new father-in-law was murdered less that 12 hours earlier and that he is the prime suspect. Can he fathom out what happened before the police hear - and obviously don't believe - his story? Clark is actually not bad, here, but the plot is far too unnecessarily complicated - it could easily trip over it's own cloak and stab itself with it's own dagger - and that rather robs it of any punch. It's also really quite slow, too - quite a few scenes that add little and further decelerate the story. Not bad, but too long and never something you will remember watching.