User Reviews

BLIND SPOT – 1958

This one is an inferior remake of the same producer, Robert S Baker's 1950 thriller, BLACKOUT.

An American Army officer, Robert Mackenzie is laid up in a military hospital waiting for an operation. He has lost his sight due to a head injury. The medical types need to wait for the injury to heal before operating to repair his eyesight. Mackenzie is invited off base to attend a party at a fellow officer's place. He gets a ride but is dropped off at the wrong address.

He enters the house and stumbles over a dead body. The killers, Ronan O'Casey and George Pastell see that Mackenzie is blind, so they give him a belt on the head and dump him down a flight of stairs. Mackenzie wakes up in a hospital with assorted bruises etc. He tells everyone about tripping over a body but no one believes him.

Several months later he has his vision restored. He now spends his time trying to prove his story. He is soon mixed up with diamond smugglers, killers and a crooked aircraft mechanic, Gordon Jackson. Also in the mix are the father, John Le Mesurier and sister, Delphi Lawrence of a supposedly dead pilot.

The film follows Mackenzie as he encounters various roadblocks thrown in his way by the villains. Several large holes in the plot are simply ignored by director Peter Maxwell. Finally at the end we discover that the leader of the smugglers is Michael Caine of all people. Caine gets all of 3 minutes of screen time before he is killed off while trying to escape the Police.

While BLIND SPOT is not a total waste of time, the 1950 original, BLACKOUT, is a better film. This one really suffers from a rushed feel and some real sub par acting.

Up until about the half way point this is quite a reasonable thriller.However at that point an event occurs which shows a bit of desperation on the part of the writers.In order to regain the thread of the plot we have to suspend a great deal of disbelief.The hero drives into a garage and sees a car that had been driven by one of the villains a few minutes earlier.It just so happens that it is being repaired and the mechanic gives him the address of the owner.This leads to some rather ropey goings on at an old house.Ronan O Casey is not a very believable thug even with a scar on his cheek.So after promising beginnings it all becomes rather routine.A remake of Blackout(1950)

This is a great film, but it has almost the same plot as another Baker/Berman film entitled 'Blackout' (1950), in that it has a blind person who gets taken to the wrong place and finds a dead body! After an operation he gets his sight back and tries to find the killers. I suppose 'Blindspot' (1958) could be classed as a remake. Just like the voice-over says in the 'Naked City' TV series "the names and places have been changed to protect the innocent..and the guilty" The only one who does not get his name changed (for some reason) was 'Chalky' White The reason Michael Caine is down the credit list is because he appears in the film for under four minutes screen time and his character (Johnny Brent) was originally 'Norman Dale' in the original. Early in the film Johnny Brent is only mentioned as a War Hero who was killed in an air accident but he had faked his death and went under the name Johnny Dubar which is the surname of his wife Yvonne. Other small changes are put in, which I presume the reason for this was because they had a higher budget for the second one. In that the hero of the original (Christopher Perry) is a blind engineer, rather than an American soldier. The gang smuggle cash instead of the later Diamonds, The main villain dies from falling off a roof rather than been killed in a car crash. The first change that you notice is that the dead body has a knife in it's back and an inscribed ring,but these are changed to a dead body (shot?) and an RAF tie clip which Michael Caine is later seen wearing on his entrance with his sister. But they are both good films, but the same, with a lot of on location filming in 1950's London. A great film to watch on a cold day with a mug of cocoa and a hot water bottle - highly enjoyable!

Enjoyable enough British B film, which would have been even more enjoyable if the two leads weren't so colourless. (The female lead - Anne Sharp - was married to one of the producers, so that explains her presence.) A convoluted plot with some interesting location shooting - a West London petrol station and air freight depot, for example. A number of recognisable character actors also brighten up proceedings - Ronan O'Casey (known to me as David Kossof's Canadian son-in-law in "The Larkins" but here playing a convincing heavy); Andrew Faulds in his pre- RSC and Labour MP days making heavy weather as a police inspector; Gordon Jackson reduced to B films playing "Chalky" White (sic) and - in a nod to "The Big Sleep" - being forced through a door by the hero to meet a fate intended for said hero (run down by a car rather than gunned down by a hail of bullets); and biggest name of all, Michael Caine - revealed as the chief villain in the last few minutes before meeting a fiery doom in a car crash. Of interest to "Dad's Army" fans, the film also features John Le Mesurier and Arthur Lowe (though not together), the latter in an unusually proletarian role (garage mechanic) quite unlike Captain Mainwaring.

Well I watched this film last night and must say I really enjoyed it. Saying that however I must say there is a huge spoiler if you watch the cast list at the start, a very famous actor appears in it but when you see his photo in the film he is supposed to be dead so you can draw your own conclusions from that!

Perhaps someone can tell me why films and television shows usually display the cast at the start instead of at the end when you know the characters.

Anyway as I mentioned I found it an enjoyable little thriller and would recommend it to those who like these hidden gems.

After the early tense scene where the blind Captain Dan Adams finds the dead body in the wrong house and gets knocked out the film becomes a routine mystery story with no surprises. It was obvious that Johnny Brent was still alive and that 'Chalky' White was part of the diamond smuggling gang. The only reason to watch the film is the abundance of good and familiar acting talent; Delphi Lawrence, Gordon Jackson, John Le Mesurier, George Pastell, Arthur Lowe, Andrew Faulds, John Crawford and in a brief but effective appearance Michael Caine as the seemingly lost brother. It was a re-make of 'Blackout' from 1950, not better but not worse either.