A really interesting little film noir thriller for you this week. Casey Morrow, a broke US former US serviceman washes up in London and spends his last bit of cash getting drunk in a bar. He’s approached bya stunning blonde woman who offers him £500, a small fortune back in 1954 when the film was made, for helping her out.
He drinks some more with the woman and she helps to guide the now almost blind drunk man out of the club. The last thing he can remember before he passes out is the blonde offering to marry him.
The man wakes up the following morning with a terrible hangover in the studio of a female artist. He remembers nothing from the night before but he does notice a portrait of the blonde from the club on an easel in the studio. He’s told by the artist that he’d been banging on her door at 2am so, as he seemed to be connected to her friend, the mysterious blonde, she let him into the studio in order to sleep.
After coffee with the artist at her studio, Morrow leaves it and walks down the street where he discovers from a newspaper seller that the blonde was a heiress called Phyllis Brunner who is missing, presumed kidnapped and that her father had been murdered. He also discovers that he has £500 in his pocket.
Believing that he will be under suspicion for the murder and the kidnapping Morrow sets out to both avoid the Scotland Yard officers who are investigating the murder and also to find evidence to prove his innocence. This leads him into a world where not everything or everyone is all that they seem and he finds himself enmeshed in a web of lies and deceit concerning Miss Brunner’s family. There’s a brilliant climax to the film where all is revealed and where many of the questions that Morrow has about the situation he has found himself in are answered.
This is a rip roaring tale which I’m not going to reveal too much of as it will spoil the ending for those who have not seen this film before. Blackout was a recent discovery for me and I found it a very entertaining, intrieging and enjoyable movie and I hope you enjoy it too.
