Daphne Duplaix in The Blackout (1997)

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I hate the friggin' thing enough to give it an F, but I guess some people may think it is a sexy noir thriller or something. I don't know. It does have a lot of flesh, and it's technically excellent, so I guess we have to rate it a C- as an erotic thriller, although I don't know what it is supposed to be.

I think it is meant to be some kind of psychological examination of guilt, kind of a hip guttersnipe version of Hitchcock. I do know that it never got a theatrical release in the USA, and it took more than three years to get it to home video, so I'm not the only one who thought it was a weak offering.

Of all the movies that are supposed to have a "surprise" at the end, this must take the trophy as the least surprising. Here's the set-up. Matthew Modine plays a famous actor who is a chronic alcohol and drug abuser. He went on an especially bad binge out of anger and frustration when his girlfriend got an abortion without telling him.

It's obvious that he was obsessive about her, and she didn't love him at all. When he wakes up, he seems to be missing a day of his life, and his girlfriend has disappeared. He is afraid, based on his mood at the time, her disappearance, and his nightmares, that he killed her.

On the very night when he had a blackout, he had a one-night stand with another woman, a waitress who was awed by her chance to fuck a star. His friend (Dennis Hopper) is making some kind of documentary porn film, and thought it would be dramatic to take that waitress and dress her up in a wig to make her look like the girlfriend, then film Modine's reactions. To make things even stranger, the waitress has the same name as the girlfriend. She even has it on her name tag!

OK, now how surprised do you think you will be by the ending? Do you think you can figure out what really happened that night? I had it in - oh, a second, give or take, after Hopper put the wig on the waitress, and at that time nobody was even dead yet!

Then I had to watch the remaining however many minutes before the film finally revealed the obvious - the girlfriend only fled to escape his obsession, and he killed the other chick in a drug-induced haze, probably not even knowing she was only the other chick.

Nudity Report: Beatrice Dalle showed her breasts in various multi-cut, dissolved, dark shots in a sex scene. Two hookers did a long sleazy topless scene with Modine and Hopper.

Sarah Lassez has a long full-frontal at the very end of the film. It is dark and completely gratuitous, but is still nice to look at.

IMDB Summary: Readers say 4.1/10.

DVD Info: Widescreen anamorphic, 1.85:1, plus a full screen version. Visual quality is excellent. No meaningful features.

Written by: Scoopy ...Scoopy.net