Black Rainbow is a movie with an intriguing premise. Rosanna Arquette plays a traveling medium who rides the small-town circuit in the Bible Belt, claiming to pass on messages from deceased relatives to the gullible and bereaved. Her life changes radically one day when she starts to experience genuine messages from the dead - and what makes it spookier is that the person speaking from beyond is not dead - yet. One night Rosanna describes a grisly death scene to a woman. The graphic and depressing scene is off-message to begin with since people do not pay for these sessions to hear about the suffering of their dead spouses, but what makes it truly horrifying and confusing is that the message is from the woman's allegedly dead husband, who is actually home watching TV. The drama intensifies that night when the husband is killed by a professional hit man from Chicago, in the exact manner described earlier by Rosanna.

Gaining the gift of prophecy could be traumatic enough on its own, but the impact of it goes beyond trauma and into outright danger when Rosanna realizes that she has told everyone she can identify the murderer. As a general rule, hit men do not appreciate publicity (I notice that very few of them use the Yellow Pages), and this one is no exception. Rosanna has not actually named him yet, so he gets on a plane to East Jesus, Alabama with a plan to silence the clairvoyant before she can reveal his identity to the world.

Pinto from Animal House (Tom Hulce) plays a skeptical reporter who first becomes convinced of Rosanna's psychic powers and then starts to notice that she's also smokin' hot and becomes her lover. Jason Robards plays Rosanna's alcoholic father and manager who just wants his daughter to do the bland phony spiritualism that pays the bills, and doesn't cotton to this new business of actually providing the communication with the dead that his customers are paying for.

The film is very similar to some of the best old Twilight Zone episodes in that it uses a supernatural story to make some serious points about society and religion. Unfortunately, it takes the philosophy too seriously and leaves too many loose ends in the story. The dialogue is stilted and artificial, like something from a Tennessee Williams play, while some of the characters' actions seem inexplicable at times (one major character seems to change loyalties without and justification or explanation), and the final showdown with the hit man is more confusing than suspenseful.

The narrative structure is clumsy as well. The story is built inside of a framing device in which Hulce plays a much older version of himself trying to find Rosanna many years after the incident with the hit man. There was only one reason to add the framing device, and that was to add a nifty surprise ending, ala Rod Serling. Unfortunately, the script keeps going after the "gotcha" moment has already revealed the big secret. Although that secret could probably stand a bit of explanation, none is offered.

Hey, sometimes ya jes' gotta know when to sign off and roll dem credits. I would have ended the movie as soon as Pinto saw the mysterious photos ... would have frozen the film right there with the photos in his hand.

It's all a bit stuffy and pretentious for the subject matter, but it's actually not a bad movie at all, just a disappointingly mediocre one, It's one of the rare films that might actually make a good candidate for a remake because it had an excellent premise but couldn't make it all work properly.

By the way, if they ever explained why the film is called Black Rainbow, I missed it. My best guess is as follows. Black rainbows are the phenomenon created by the moon at night. Although all the colors of the spectrum are present in them, they appear black to us because they are outlined against a black sky. (We are certain that the colors are actually there because they can suddenly appear during certain lighting conditions.) Rosanna in this film is a person who can see those things which are there but cannot be seen by the rest of us - in this respect the faces of the dead are like the colors in a black rainbow. I realize that clarification is obscure, but it makes sense, given the tag line: "There is a spectrum of terror that only a few can see ..."