Wednesday, May 12, 2010

1965 - BLINDFOLD, entertaining spy/comedy/ thriller could have used a little more of a Hitchcock touch

The working definition of a decent time killer of a movie.  The writer/director Phillip Dunne was a veteran screenwriter from the 20th Century Fox Daryl F Zanuck years.  In 1965 working for Universal,  Dunne knocked out this comedy/spy thriller as a quasi Hitchcock type of film.

Dunne took a story by Lucille Fletcher about a psychiatrist who is literally blindfolded by the United States government and taken to treat a psychotic scientist. The scientist is being pursued by enemy agents who are trying to kidnap him.   The psychotic scientist also has a very pretty sister played by Claudia Cardinale who is about as necessary to this plot as a snowball in hell, however she looks really good.  



Phillip Dunne was a very witty guy and he wrote enough screenplays to know how to knock out something like this in his sleep.  If nothing in the movie is outstanding it's at least entertaining and very smooth.



Dunne cast Rock Hudson as the psychiatrist and in what I can only presume is a very inside Hollywood joke about Hudson, he makes him a guy who has relationship issues with women.  That said, Rock is a decent light comedian and he generally gets the job done.


Claudia Cardinale is gorgeous and if Phillip Dunne can't really write much of a character for her he's smart enough to have her run around in a leotard towards the end.  

1 comment:

Stephanie Post said...

Nice to see this film reviewed! I actually liked it quite a bit more than you did. Rock was charming and handsome, as usual. It's not his deepest character but he plays the role well.

The scene where they are pretending to be mannequins in the back of a van is hilarious! There's also a really funny fight scene involving a canoe, a rocking horse, and a fire extinguisher.

Claudia Cardinal is gorgeous - she and Rock make quite the good looking pair!

At the moment this movie is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGNPFBLB1f4