Blind Date

I will not use the genre "THRILLER" to portray this film as in my humble opinion just because writer/director Nico Mastorakis who is one of the most highly successful Greek film and television producers penned Blind Date, it left me feeling cheated. Why you may ask?

Well... from the opening credits where there are a few dark and blurry scenes the audience witnesses a serial killer using a magic marker to outline on his first two female victims chests where he is about to use a sharp scalpel to cut them open, the less than scary musical score which Nico Mastorakis's uses is present throughout this very dull film.

I will say the science fiction approach to solve who the serial killer was something I have not seen in any other film. The lead actor Joseph Bottoms who plays Jonathon Ratcliff, a successful promotional executive is caught peeping on what he thinks is his first love and her new beau until the new beau named Dave (played by good looking James Daughton) gives chase in the middle of the night and as hilarious as it may seem, our star actor Jonathon Ractcliff runs smack dab into a low hanging tree limb and wakes up totally blind. Here is where the science fiction theme comes into play, a successful surgeon named Dr. Steiger (Keir Dullea) suggests he can help the recently blinded Jonathon Ratcliff using a combination or radiation surgery and a magnetic implant on his brain so that when he uses a prototype Sony Walkman (remember this film was made in 1984 and Sony was on the leading edge of the film and music industries technology boom) on the outer edge of Jonathon's skull he will be able to see 3-D animated outline images of what the rest of the world sees.

And so equipped with his new Sony Walkman seeing eye technology and a creative host of animators the film moves on to allow our star Jonathon Ratcliff to help save his first love once more from possibly falling as the next victim of this mad serial killer whose modus operando is to capture his female victims, then outline using a magic marker on their bare chests where he then intends to make his incision with his sharp scalpel while the directors irritating musical score sorely fails at keeping us the audience in suspense.

I won't spoil the ending for anyone since from the opening scene the film left me wondering if this film would be worth continuing to watch. I give the film a 4 out of 10 rating mainly for the unique use of the cutting edge sight seeing technology that Dr. Steiger used on his patient Jonathon Ratcliff which was the only interesting part of the story.

An average thriller about a stalker who goes blind after hitting his head on a tree while being chased by an angry boyfriend. He gets implanted with a chip that lets him see in vague computer graphic outline. Meanwhile a killer is experimenting on female victims. This film is nothing that special except for geeks, which should see it because it has Marina Sirtis (Star Trek: TNG's Diana Troy) topless in it. Oh and Kristie Alley has a nude love scene in it as well, but I'm not too fond of her.

Omega DVD extras: The films of Nico Mastorakis:part one-From the beginning to "Sky High" (for parts 2 and 3 you have to get 2 more of Nico's films..greedy bastard) ; 2 Music tracks; Filmographies; Bios; Theatrical trailer; Trailers for "In the Cold of the Night", "Sky High", "Bloodstone", and ".dot com for Murder"

My Grade: C-

This is an excellent film. The thing that struck me first was that this was a serial killer flick in which the police hardly figure at all, you see them once or twice from a distance. You have two stories running in parallel until finally, and inevitably, they cross.

The second thing that really got me thinking is that our agent of justice probably got the wrong man. The evidence we have is far too circumstantial and would have been thrown out by any right minded jury, if the judge had not already dismissed the case.

Was the real killer driving the cab from which Kirstie Alley's character fled?

The character of Jonathan Ratcliff is interesting because, whatever his virtues might be, he is also a stalker. And we discover that when he is blinded there is no physical reason for his disability. On some subconscious level he has chosen not to see, and when he is given a device which enables him to see, after a fashion, it is in black and white and works on the same principle as sonar, that is it reflects back the signals he sends. He no longer sees the whole picture, and neither do we.



The concept of blind Justice is on one level a reassuring one since everyone is equal irrespective of race, creed, power etc.. However, on the other hand, Justice is blind! This could mean that it cannot differentiate between the innocent and the guilty.

In the film the character of Jonathan Ratcliff is living out a fantasy, when at the end he is asked by the woman he has just 'rescued' what his name is he replies, 'A friend': like a guardian angel or a comic book superhero. He is a voyeur who has been forced to take a role, to follow a destiny and he shapes that destiny himself.

The film itself is well put together and there are some wonderful Hitchcockian touches, especially in the way it exploits the blindness of the central character and the limitations and possibilities of the electronic device that substitute for his eyes.

I rate this film 8 out of 10, very thought provoking.

Director Nico Mastorakis had a moderately posh budget for once and was able to give this little techno thriller a nice glossy look, plus he proved somewhat prophetic when a few of his ideas regarding the central gimmick - a radar-like device that allows a blind person to 'see' via reflected sound - actually appeared in medical devices within a few years. Mastorakis, as usual, shows a good photographic eye for interesting backdrops, found objects, cityscapes etc. often from oddly skewed angles.

Moreover, the movie is an underground legend among video geeks who pursue gratuitous nudity by female TV stars. Marina Sirtis has a brief but memorable topless appearance as a hooker and Kirstie Alley features in her only nude sex scene. Infamous murder victim Lana Clarkson co- stars as the object of a stalker.

Beyond such prurient considerations, however, there is not a whole lot here that we didn't see fairly often in any 80s thriller. There are fights, car chases and foot pursuits (with the admittedly novel twist that one participant is a technologically augmented blind person). This was familiar stuff then and has gained no new freshness with age.

This is an interesting horror/thriller movie about a man who goes blind who gets fitted with a sci-fi device by doctors which ends up allowing him to see strange things. The movie is not very good frankly but it is a good and original premise and not bad for a cruddy 1980s sci-fi thriller/horror movie. Lots of known actors in it too back when they were younger.