Blind Date

Tuna's comments in white:

Blind Date (1984) is a slasher/thriller about a serial killer, written and directed by Nico Mastorakis, who also wrote the original story. A serial killer is butchering women with a scalpel. Meanwhile, ad exec Joseph Bottoms thinks he spots an old girlfriend who was kept away from him after she was abducted and abused while on a date with him.

He ends up losing his eyesight, but is still obsessed with the old girl friend, played by Lana Clarkson. Following her, he gets leads about the killer. He is given an implant of a new sonic device that lets him see outlines of objects, but is still essentially blind, and trying to catch this serial killer. They showed first person POV of the blind man a lot, which I suppose was nifty FX for the period, but I found it very distracting. Also, they seldom built any suspense. Other than the nudity, there was not much of interest for me. On the other hand, how can you argue with someone who got Marina Sirtis and Kirstie Alley out of their clothes and on film. While Mastorakis gets no respect at IMDB, like Andy Sidaris, I find his work acceptable low budget B quality, and therefore somewhere between C- and D+ on our scale.

Blind Date extras -- The retrospective from Mastorakis is better than any of his films, both for entertainment value, and for nudity. He apologizes at the beginning for the fact that this special feature may be better than his low budget B films. He is refreshingly honest. For instance, he mentions that he is a person who never learns from his mistakes, and played a small role in Blind Date after having failed as an actor in an earlier film. He got so tired of watching his bad acting in the cutting room that he went back on location, and reshot the scene with a real actor. Interestingly, Marina Sirtis was not the actress he cast for the prostitute part, but was sent by her agency when the woman he did cast was too sick to work. He agreed to use her, but admitted that he had no inkling that she would ever amount to anything.

The full-length version of the Kirstie Alley sex scene sizzles. As a matter of fact, it was cut because it was way too hot to get by the censors. Most of the footage is from "ungraded dailies," but is coherently edited, with a music score. I suspect that Nico has been enjoying this in his private collection for some time. There is also some footage of Valeria Golino, who played a small part as a bikini model, making her film debut at age 17.

The retrospective is at least a C+ on our normal scale, and his choice of deleted scenes is a solid A!

NUDITY REPORT

Breasts from Kirstie Alley in a love scene (far more in the Mastrorakis documentary portion of the disk), also two down-blouses,

Breasts from Marina Sirtis, Lana Clarkson, Kathy Hill, and Antigone Amanitis

Scoop's comments in yellow:

DVD info from Amazon.

Widescreen anamorphic 1.85:1. Good transfer, newly remastered.
20 minute feature on the films of Mastorakis, part 1, including additional footage from Kirstie Alley's topless love scene

I have nothing much to say except "me, too". I am not really a fan of Mastorakis's movies, but every one I have seen is nicely shot and edited, and the later ones are storyboarded in a very complex and high-tech manner with frequent cuts and gothic camera angles, reminiscent of Brian de Palma. In my opinion, Mastorakis is actually a solid director and editor, capable of shooting a Hollywood film if he were so inclined, but he is not so inclined. He likes his role as a veteran full-service indie auteur. It seems to me that this is holding him back. I don't much like him as a scriptwriter, and I don't like a lot of his casting choices, except for his choice of gorgeous women to undress, where his taste is impeccable.

His extra features are always excellent, and in this case are worth the price of the entire disk.

The Critics Vote

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The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. 4.9/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by genre fans, while C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.

Based on this description, Tuna grades the film a D+ or C-, but the extra features are at least a C+, maybe more because of Mastorakis's candor and anecdotes, which make his interviews fascinating. Scoop agrees.