In 1984’s Blind Date, Joseph Bottoms stars as Jonathon Ratcliff, an American who works in Greece.
Jonathon would appear to have it all. He has a good job in an exotic land. He has a nice home. He has a beautiful girlfriend named Claire (Kirstie Alley). He has co-workers who love him so much that they insist on throwing him a birthday party and giving him his cake while he’s making love to Claire. Jonathon enjoys jogging and listening to music and spying on his neighbor, which the film treats as a harmless little thing that all men do. I mean, I guess we should be happy that Jonathon isn’t disguising himself as a taxi driver and murdering the women that he picks up with a scalpel. No, someone else is doing that.
Jonathon suddenly loses his eyesight. Fortunately, Dr. Steiger (James Daughton) has a solution. He’s created a computer program that turns sound into very primitive, grid-like images. As long as Jonathon is wearing his headphones, he can see … kind of. At first, it’s all good fun. Jonathon beats up the extremely flamboyant muggers who have been harassing him at the subway station. And he continues to spy on his neighbor whenever she’s getting undressed which is not cool considering that Claire has stayed with him through his entire ordeal.
Meanwhile, the scalpel murders are continuing….
Now, to be honest, I assumed that Jonathon was going to form some sort of mental connection with the killer and start seeing the murder through the killer’s eyes. Instead, Jonathon just hears the killer walking with one of his victims and he ends up investigating on his own, despite not really being able to see well. Basically, the whole idea of Jonathon being blind doesn’t have much to do with the thriller aspect of the plot. I could maybe accept that if the film hadn’t spent a huge amount of time explaining in pain-staking detail how exactly Jonathon’s “eyes” work. The action literally stopped for a huge chunk of the film’s running time so that the film could make its most ludicrous plot point seem even more ludicrous.
Greek director Nico Mastokaris is obviously trying to do an Argento-style giallo with Blind Date and, indeed, Argento himself has a noted habit of including intriguing but ultimately pointless red herrings in his films. Just as Asia Argento having the Stendhal Syndrome proved to be a bit inconsequential to The Stendhal Syndrome, Joseph Bottoms being blind is inconsequential to Blind Date. That said, Argento can get away with that sort of thing because, even in his weaker films, he’s clever stylist and he usually maintain a solid narrative pace. Blind Date, on the other hand, is rather draggy and Joseph Bottoms is not a particularly likeable hero.
On the positive side, James Daughton (he was the head of the evil frat in Animal House) gives a genuinely interesting performance and Kirstie Alley is likable as the neurotic Claire. For the most part, though, one can see why the sequel promised in the closing credits never came to be.
Through the Shattered Lens 