Film Review: Blow Out (dir by Brian De Palma)

Posted on October 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before the shouting starts, allow me to say that I fully understand that 1981’s Blow Out is not a horror film .… or at least, it isn’t in the traditional way. It’s a conspiracy thriller starring John Travolta as Jack Terry, a Philadelphia sound technician. While recording outside sounds, he witnesses a car careen off a bridge and crash into a creek. Though the driver is killed in the crash, Jack is able to pull the car’s passenger, an escort named Sally (Nancy Allen), out of the water. Later, Jack learns that the driver was Governor George McRyan, a presidential candidate. And when Jack listens to his tapes of the crash, he becomes convinced that he can hear someone shooting out one of the tires.

So, yes, the film is definitely a conspiracy thriller, one that owes quite a bit to the lore surrounding the Kennedys. Jack’s sound tape and the later discovery that a sleazy guy with the unforgettable name of Manny Karp (Dennis Franz) filmed the accident bring to mind the Zapruder film and the ongoing debate about what it showed and didn’t show. (Watching the film, one is reminded that it took several years for people to acknowledge that a key moment in the Zapruder Tape was actually shown in reverse when it was first released to the public.) The crash into the creek brings to mind the night that Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and left Mary Jo Kopechne to die while he returned to his hotel and got some sleep. There were some conspiracy theorists who claimed that the accident was actually the result of an attempt on Ted’s life. (It’s always interesting how Chappaquiddick is described as being a Kennedy tragedy when, in actuality, Mary Jo Kopechne is the one who died and Ted was the one reelected to the Senate.) Just a year before Blow Out was released, Ted Kennedy ran for President and discovered that voters outside of Massachusetts actually did care about what he did at Chappaquiddick. Meanwhile, director Brian De Palma’s interest in the Kennedy assassination could be traced all the way back to Greetings and Gerrit Graham’s performance as a conspiracy-obsessed hipster.

That said, Blow Out is definitely horror-adjacent. The film opens with footage from a believably bad slasher film called Co-Ed Frenzy. The footage makes use of all the expected slasher tropes, from the prowling camera to the gratuitous nudity to the death of a voyeuristic extra. But it falls apart during the inevitable shower scene, when it turns out that the actress cannot scream. It’s a reminder that the violence in horror movies is not real. Instead, it’s carefully choreographed and edited to keep the viewer uneasy. Jack is ordered to record the perfect scream to fool viewers into thinking the horror is real. Jack manages to do so, but at a terrible cost. The scream works in the film. The spell that the film puts over the audience will not be broken. But Jack will never be able to listen to his work.

The film also features John Lithgow as Burke, one of the cruelest villains to be found in De Palma’s entire filmography. Burke knows that he has to kill Sally to cover up the assassination of Governor McRyan but, rather than just kill her, he first kills several women who resemble her so that Sally will be viewed as just being the latest victim of the Liberty Bell Strangler. John Lithgow is a terrifying murderer because he’s so casual about it. For him, it’s just a part of the job. Ever since I saw Blow Out for the first time, I automatically get uneasy whenever John Lithgow shows up in a movie. In a film full of good performances, John Lithgow is terrifying.

Blow Out is a stylish film, which should come as no surprise given that it was directed by Brian De Palma. De Palma goes as far as to create a fictional holiday—“Liberty Day”—so that he can fill the climax with red, white, and blue. The celebrations, which are meant to commemorate the ringing of the Liberty Bell, provide a joyous contrast to the darkness that defines the worlds of the film’s characters. Like the best conspiracy thrillers, Blow Out is drenched in an atmosphere of paranoia. No one can be trusted, and the scariest thing isn’t that people don’t know the truth. It’s that they don’t want to know. And while this theme was undoubtedly something that De Palma carried into the ’80s from the ’60s and the ’70s, it feels even more relevant today as we’re continually told that we shouldn’t still be thinking about the excesses and secrets of the COVID era.

So no, Blow Out is not a horror film.

But it’s definitely scary.

October Hacks: Tourist Trap (dir by David Schmoeller)

Posted on October 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1979’s Tourist Trap opens in the same way that many slasher films have opened. A group of friends — young, attractive, and not particularly bright — are driving through a secluded, rural area when they have car trouble.

Now, I have to say that, if I was driving through a rural secluded area or even if I was just a passenger in the vehicle, I would totally freak out if the car broke down. I mean, seriously, you’re in the middle of nowhere. You have no idea who or what might be hiding behind those trees. Even if you don’t get attacked by a bunch of inbred hillbilly cousins, you might get eaten by a bear or, even worse, you might get mauled by a deer and end up with Lyme Disease. Or you might just end up with a bunch of flies buzzing around your face, which is really even worse than getting attacked by a wild animal.

(Pro-tip: One way to deal with flies is to combine the open flame of a lighter with a can of hairspray.)

I’ve seen enough slasher films to know that bad things happen when you get lost in the woods. However, up until everything started getting all self-referential in the 1990s, old school slasher films were infamous for featuring characters who had apparently never seen a slasher film or really any other type of movie before.

Your car broke down in the woods? One member of your party has already disappeared while looking for a gas station? You have no way of letting anyone know where you are? Sure, why not go skinny dipping? For that matter, why not check out Slausen’s Lost Oasis, a run-down shack that is the home of a lot of wax figures and which is owned by the shotgun-toting Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors). Mr. Slausen is pretty bitter about the new freeway. It took away all of his business.

Of course, it turns out that there’s more to this tourist trap than meets the eyes. For one thing, the mannequins often seem to randomly come to life and murder anyone who spends too much time alone with them. Secondly, things in the tourist trap often move on their own, as if someone has psychic powers. And then there the enigmatic man who wears a wax mask and likes to take people hostage before transforming them into wax figures….

Tourist Trap has a totally ludicrous plot but Slausen’s Oasis is such a creepy location and Chuck Connors plays his role with such unnerving intensity that it doesn’t matter that things don’t always make sense. At its best, Tourist Trap plays out like a filmed nightmare, one in which the rules of normal physics often don’t seem to apply. The victims are interchangeable (though I did like Tanya Roberts’s energetic performance as Becky) but the kills are imaginative and memorable gruesome. Researching the film, I was surprised to discover that Tourist Trap was given a PG-rating, despite the skinny dipping and the blood and all of the terrifying wax figures. Don’t let that rating fool you. This is genuinely scary slasher film and one that everyone should see before going on an impulsive road trip to the middle of nowhere.

DEATH WISH II – Bronson wears a beanie!

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Bradley Crain

I’m on Day 2 of my discussion of Charles Bronson’s DEATH WISH series in chronological order. This series has brought me countless hours of entertainment over the last 40 years, so enjoy and let me know your thoughts!

Charles Bronson returns as vigilante Paul Kersey in DEATH WISH II. In this installment, Kersey is trying to get his life back on track in Los Angeles with his daughter Carol, who’s still traumatized from the events of the first film, and with his new lady friend Geri Nichols (Jill Ireland). One day when he takes these two out for a fun day of shopping and ice cream, Kersey runs afoul of a group of young thugs who take his wallet. They use the wallet to find Kersey’s address, stand outside his house and make a plan like they’re diagramming a back yard football play, and then break in and rape his housekeeper. They set up shop to wait on Kersey to come home. When Kersey and his daughter finally arrive, the thugs knock out Kersey and kidnap his daughter. They take her back to their warehouse / hideout, where they rape her and she then falls to her death trying to escape. After this series of horrific events, Paul Kersey again turns vigilante to hunt down and kill every person responsible.

DEATH WISH II (1982) came along at a time in Charles Bronson’s career when he needed a box office hit. His prior three movies, DEATH HUNT, BORDERLINE & CABOBLANCO, had barely made a dent at the box office. Around the same time that Bronson needed a hit, the infamous Cannon Films, recently purchased by cousins Menahem Golan & Yoram Globus, was also looking to make a big splash in the American movie market. Cannon decided that a sequel to DEATH WISH was just what they needed, and with a big paycheck, they were able to convince Bronson to come along for the ride. Director Michael Winner was also hired to direct. The resulting film was a big success, earning back eight times its production budget at the box office alone. Its success also started a relationship between Bronson & Cannon Films that lasted for a total of eight films all the way to the end of the 1980’s.

Now that we’ve discussed how important DEATH WISH II was to extending Charles Bronson’s leading man career and providing Cannon Films a needed hit, let’s talk about the movie itself. I’m just going to say upfront that it’s my least favorite of the DEATH WISH series. Even though it presents itself as a serious film, it’s more of an exploitative retread of the 70’s classic than a realistic continuation of the Kersey character. And the first thirty minutes is hard to watch. Not content with just allowing Kersey to lose a beloved family member, Winner has crafted two graphic rape and murder sequences. These scenes are rough. While they do make sure we want to see Paul Kersey get his revenge, they leave a bad taste in our mouth that doesn’t go away as the creeps are being dispatched one by one. Vincent Gardenia returns as Frank Ochoa, the New York detective who investigated the original vigilante killings in DEATH WISH. Gardenia was so good in the original, but he’s not given much to do here. Jill Ireland doesn’t really add much either as his new lady friend.

This is a Charles Bronson film though, so there are definitely some things about DEATH WISH II that I really do like. First, I think Bronson looks like a total badass in his beanie that he wears when he’s hunting down the creeps on the mean streets of LA. It’s a classic 80’s Bronson look. Second, Kersey has some cool sayings as he dispatches the bad guys. The “Do you believe in Jesus” exchange is the best example. Third, it’s fun seeing a young Laurence Fishburne show up as one of the creeps, extending the franchise’s ability to cast future big stars as horrific rapists. Jeff Goldblum had that distinction in DEATH WISH. And finally, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page composed the music for DEATH WISH II. It’s a memorable soundtrack that’s different than just about anything I’ve ever heard. It’s the most unique thing about the entire movie!

The bottom line is that I would watch Charles Bronson read a phone book, so I will always find something to enjoy about his films. Well, maybe every one but LOLA. DEATH WISH II isn’t as fun as most Bronson movies, even if it does have some good moments. I’m glad DEATH WISH 3 went a completely different direction with Kersey’s character.

BONUS: Robert “Bobby” Lyons had a part in DEATH WISH II. On our THIS WEEK IN CHARLES BRONSON PODCAST, my partner Eric Todd and I interviewed Bobby about his time on DEATH WISH II and a whole bunch of other topics. He has some interesting stories to tell about working with Charles Bronson, as well as clashing on the DEATH WISH II set with Michael Winner. Give it a listen if you get a chance!

Bronson’s Back!: Death Wish II (1982, directed by Michael Winner)

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

To quote John McClane, “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”

It has been eight years since Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) lost his wife and single-handedly cleaned up New York City. The first Death Wish ended with Paul in Chicago, preparing to gun down a new group of criminals. I guess Chicago didn’t take because, at the start of Death Wish II, Paul is in Los Angeles and he’s working as an architect again. He has a new girlfriend, a bleeding heart liberal reporter named Geri (Jill Ireland, Bronson’s real-life wife) who is against the death penalty and who has no idea that Paul used to be New York’s most notorious vigilante. Having finally been released from the mental institution, Carol (Robin Sherwood) is living with her father but is now mute.

Crime rates are soaring in Los Angeles and why not? The legal system is more concerned with the rights of the criminals than the victims and Paul has retired from patrolling the streets. But when a group of cartoonish thugs rape and kill his housekeeper and cause his daughter to fall out of a window while trying to escape them, Paul picks up his gun and sets out for revenge.

Death Wish II was not the first sequel to Death Wish. Brian Garfield, the author of the novel on which Death Wish was based, never intended for Paul to be seen as a hero and was disgusted by what he saw as being the film’s glorification of violence. As “penance,” he wrote a sequel called Death Sentence, in which Paul discovered that he had inspired an even more dangerous vigilante. When Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus bought the rights to produce a second Death Wish film, they decided not to use Garfield’s sequel and instead went with a story that was co-written by Golan.

It’s the same basic story as the first film. Again, Paul is a mild-mannered architect who is a liberal during the day and a gun-toting reactionary at night. Again, it’s a home invasion and a death in the family that sets Paul off. Again, Paul gets help from sympathetic citizens who don’t care that the police commissioner (Anthony Franciosa) wants him off the streets. Jeff Goldblum played a rapist with a switch blade in the first film. This time, it’s Laurence Fishburne who fills the role. (Fishburne also carries a radio, which he eventually learns cannot be used to block bullets.) Even Detective Ochoa (Vincent Gardenia) returns, coming down to Los Angeles to see if Paul has returned to his old ways.

The main difference between the first two Death Wish films is that Death Wish II is a Cannon film, which means that it is even less concerned with reality than the first film. In Death Wish II, the criminals are more flamboyant, the violence is more graphic, and Paul is even more of a relentless avenger than in the first film. In the first Death Wish, Paul threw up after fighting a mugger. In the second Death Wish, he sees that one of the men who raped his daughter is wearing a cross, leading to the following exchange:

“Do you believe in Jesus?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, you’re going to meet him.”

BLAM!

Death Wish II is the best known of the Death Wish sequels. It made the most money and, when I was a kid, it used to show on TV constantly. The commercials always featured the “You believe in Jesus?” exchange and, every morning after we saw those commercials, all the kids at school would walk up to each other and say, “You believe in Jesus? Well, you’re going to meet him.” It drove the teachers crazy.

Overall, Death Wish II is a lousy film. Michael Winner, who was always more concerned with getting people into the theaters than anything else, directs in a sledgehammer manner that makes his work on the first film look subtle. He obscenely lingers over every rape and murder, leaving no doubt that he is more interested in titillating the audience than getting them to share Paul’s outrage. The script is also weak, with Geri so poorly written that she actually gets more upset about Paul going out at night than she does when she learns that Paul’s daughter has died. When Paul sets out to track down the gang, his method is to merely wander around Los Angeles until he stumbles across them. It doesn’t take long for Paul to start taking them out but no one in the gang ever seems to be upset or worried that someone is obviously stalking and killing them.

There are a few good things about the film. Charles Bronson was always a better actor than he was given credit for and it’s always fun to watch Paul try to balance his normal daily routine with his violent night life. Whenever Geri demands to know if he’s been shooting people, Paul looks at her like he is personally offended that she could possibly think such a thing. Also, the criminals themselves are all so cartoonishly evil that there’s never any question that Paul is doing the world a favor by gunning them down. For many otherwise sensible viewers, a movie like Death Wish II may be bad but it is also cathartic. It offers up a simple solution to a complex issue. In real life, a city full of Paul Kerseys would lead to innocent people getting killed for no good reason. But in the world of Death Wish II, no one out after nightfall is innocent so there’s no need to worry about shooting the wrong person.

Finally, the film’s score was written by the legendary Jimmy Page. The studio wanted Isaac Hayes to do the score but Winner asked his neighbor, Page. Page took the film, retreated into his studio, and returned with a bluesy score that would turn out to be the best thing about the movie. The soundtrack was the only one of Page’s solo projects to be released on Led Zeppelin’s record label, Swan Song Records.