The Perfect Husband.

In the few months I have taken off from this feature, the “pile” has increased to a size that I can no longer ignore. With it being spooky season, this seems like the perfect time to get back at it. Today's VHS is a recent acquisition in Douglas Hickox's 1985 teleplay Blackout.

A retired cop named Steiner (Richard Widmark) suspects a family man and former car wreck survivor amnesiac (Keith Carradine) is actually an uncaught serial killer. But can he prove it?

I knew nothing about this movie, other than the coverbox, which was pretty prominent back in the day. It took me a while to figure out that the title refers not to a power outage (as said coverbox would suggest) but the loss of memory. This movie has some decent pedigree as it was directed by Douglas Hickox (father of horror vet Anthony), lensed by Tak Fujimoto (The Silence of the Lambs & The Sixth Sense among others), make up artist Michael Westmore (a Star Trek mainstay for decades) as well as notable actors Widmark, Carradine and Kathleen Quinlan. What comes out of it is a serviceable TV movie for HBO.

I was conscious while watching that this was something likely done for the small screen. Apart from the brutality of the murders at the hop (of which we only see the aftermath) and the sweet prosthetics on Carradine post-accident, Blackout is pretty tame. There are enough red herrings to keep things interesting, but yeah, everything about this felt pretty workmanlike.

It almost felt like two movies. It started out like something that would have been more at home in the next decade - post SotL - although it would have been more salacious, with more attention given to the actual crimes for that - but then it shifts into more straightforward fare. It reminded me of that Channing Tatum/Rachel McAdams joint where he's got amnesia and they are “re-dating”? Then it would eventually cut back to Widmark and his wall of news clippings and I'd be like, 'oh right this is what we're watching'. I was beginning to think this was one of those titles where the coverbox is completely misleading, but no, an hour in, the gimp mask finally shows up on a guy running around raping women.

Kathleen Quinlan as Chris in Blackout.

Perhaps the most chilling thing about this movie is that apparently (according to Imdb anyway) there was a real life uxoricide (yes, I Googled it) where a dude used this movie for inspiration. No mask or anything, but he did crank his AC to keep the body of his wife undetected for as long as possible. Imagine him sitting in his family room with this other half watching HBO on a Saturday night, and a lightbulb goes off in his head, 'oh, that's a good idea, I'll have to remember that!"

So Blackout, nothing to write home about, just another in an ocean of crime thriller titles to keep video store shelves stocked.