{"id":4972,"date":"2024-10-08T19:26:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T19:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4972"},"modified":"2024-10-12T22:07:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T22:07:35","slug":"blow-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/08\/blow-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Blow Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Blow Out<\/strong> (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Filmways\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, sexual content, violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brian De Palma\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brian De Palma\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Pino Donaggio\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 24, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, Peter Boyden, Curt May, John Aquino, John McMartin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $13.7M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Once upon a time Brian De Palma made great movies. Movies like Sisters (1973), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Obsession (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980), Scarface (1983), Body Double (1984), The Untouchables (1987), Carlito\u2019s Way (1993) and Mission: Impossible (1996). The TV-to-film adaptation still ranks as his last great film. At least it does in my opinion.<\/p>\n

\u00a0During his peak period, he also made Blow Out<\/strong>, an incredible thriller starring John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever) as a movie sound man who inadvertently records a murder or what sounds like a murder. It was filmed right here in Philadelphia which also happens to be De Palma\u2019s home town. I wanted to see it when it came out in summer \u201981, but I couldn\u2019t talk anybody into taking me. I couldn\u2019t even entice my dad with the idea of seeing familiar locations on the big screen. I didn\u2019t get to feast my eyes on De Palma\u2019s masterpiece until four years later when I rented it from The Video Den.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I liked Blow Out<\/strong> just fine as a teen, but I didn\u2019t understand the full breadth of until some years later when I had a little more knowledge about cinema and history under my belt. By now, everybody knows it\u2019s based on the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni thriller Blowup about a photographer who becomes convinced he captured a murder on film. He becomes unraveled as he tries to prove it. Francis Ford Coppola utilizes a similar premise in his underrated paranoia thriller The Conversation (1974) starring Gene Hackman as a wiretapping expert who overhears what sounds like a conspiracy to commit a murder. He too goes crazy trying to prove it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sound man Jack Terry (Travolta) finds himself in a similar predicament. He\u2019s working on a low budget slasher movie called Co-Ed Frenzy where he\u2019s told by his producer friend (Boyden, Legal Eagles) to get better wind effects for a scene that\u2019s not coming together like it should. He\u2019s at a park doing just that when a car careens off the road and plunges into the river. Jack jumps in after it and saves the female passenger Sally (Allen, Dressed to Kill). He can\u2019t do anything for the driver who turns out to be an important politician.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Instead of being hailed as a hero, Jack\u2019s ordered by a close associate of the dead man to forget about it. There\u2019s no need for his family to know about the woman in his car. Obviously, there\u2019s more to it than that. Jack caught the whole thing on tape. While listening to the recording, he hears what sounds like a gunshot right before the blowout that supposedly caused the accident. It appears to have been an assassination attempt. His theory is further supported by pictures taken of the incident by a photographer (Franz, Dressed to Kill) who just happened to be in the vicinity testing a new camera. In one of the film\u2019s most riveting scenes, Jack syncs the pics with the sound to create a film of the \u201caccident\u201d. Naturally, nobody believes him, not even Sally. He eventually convinces her and she reluctantly agrees to help him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Of course, Jack is right. It wasn\u2019t an accident, not entirely. The politician, the state governor and favorite to win the upcoming Presidential election, wasn\u2019t supposed to die. Somebody stepped outside the parameters of the plan. That somebody is Burke (Lithgow, The World According to Garp), a psychotic working with the conspirators who are none too happy about the fatal turn in events. He goes to drastic lengths to cover up the cover-up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Blow Out<\/strong> is one of De Palma\u2019s finest films. It\u2019s definitely the best of his thrillers. It\u2019s brilliant how he weaves real-life occurrences like Chappaquiddick, Watergate and the Zapruder film into the narrative. It makes for a gripping tale of paranoia with a protagonist who just wants to expose the truth about a conspiracy everybody says doesn\u2019t exist. He\u2019s a classic Hitchcock hero.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the role, Travolta delivers one of his finest performances. He took a lot of grief back then with roles in lackluster projects like Moment by Moment, Staying Alive, Two of a Kind and Perfect. While hardly a master thespian along the lines of Olivier and Brando, he does alright when the material suits him. Here, he plays a guy racked by guilt over something that happened in the past, something that resulted in the loss of a life. He wants to make it right which is why he\u2019s so determined to shine a light on something rotten. The problem is he\u2019s up against too powerful a foe, the dreaded \u201cthey\u201d. \u201cThey\u201d want the truth swept under the rug. \u201cThey\u201d can futz with evidence, make it disappear. \u201cThey\u201d can erase all his tapes and listen in on his phone calls. \u201cThey\u201d are watching his every move. He can\u2019t win against \u201cthem\u201d. It\u2019s a classic Hitchcock scenario. Travolta conveys just the right amount of paranoia throughout and desperation at the end when Sally is in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Allen, who previously worked with Travolta in Carrie, is awesome as Sally. I always liked her as an actress; she always convincing in whatever role she\u2019s playing be it a mean girl, a high-priced hooker or a tough urban cop. She nails it as an aspiring makeup artist who finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy. Initially a disbeliever, she takes an active role in trying to expose it. She has solid chemistry with Travolta which makes the final scene hit all the harder.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lithgow is positively scary as the face of \u201cthey\u201d. He\u2019s the one tying up all loose ends, one of them being Sally. The way he goes about setting the stage for her elimination is cold. Franz, one of my favorite character actors, is perfect as the sleazy photographer who has a personal stake in the whole situation. He\u2019s a classic noir character.<\/p>\n

\u00a0De Palma directs in his inimitable style, making excellent use of split-screen and other cool techniques. He effectively captures different moods and styles throughout. Take the opening sequence, a scene from the movie Jack is working on. It plays just like a low-budget slasher flicks with the scantily clad girls and the use of killer\u2019s POV. It culminates with a girl being cornered in the shower by the killer. In an example of De Palma\u2019s savage wit, she lets out this scream that can generously be described as unconvincing. Okay, it\u2019s horrible. The producer keeps after Jack to help him find an actress with a better scream that can he can dub over the bad one. This may not sound important, but it ends up playing a crucial role in the final scene.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Of course, it\u2019s great seeing Philadelphia on the big screen. There are scenes set at the Reading Terminal Food Market, the Gallery Mall, 30th<\/sup> Street Station, Market Street and Penn\u2019s Landing (the climax). It\u2019s nice seeing familiar places, especially in a film as amazing as Blow Out<\/strong>. Not only does it look great, it tells a smart and compelling story that borrows elements from other sources without feeling plagiarized. De Palma, who also wrote the screenplay, makes it his own while never denying his fondness for all things Hitchcock. He\u2019s helped by some of the top people in the industry including cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and composer Pino Donaggio (Dressed to Kill).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Blow Out<\/strong> is superior in every conceivable way. It\u2019s a suspenseful and well-crafted thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final frame. Not many movies can truthfully make that claim. This one can.\"\"<\/p>\n

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Blow Out (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Filmways\/Suspense-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, sexual content, violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Brian De Palma\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brian De Palma\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Pino Donaggio\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 24, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, Peter Boyden, Curt May, John Aquino, John McMartin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $13.7M (US) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Blow-Out-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4972"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4981,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972\/revisions\/4981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}