I wanted to like BLIND DATE but in the end I was a bit bored by the whole thing, which was a shame as the film has a decent script with strong characterisation and an excellent little cast which lifts this B-movie quite considerably. I enjoyed the way that the murder mystery story is used to explore British class issues but at the end of the day it's all rather staid and talky, which means that as a thriller it doesn't work so well.
Hardy Kruger (THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX) is the erstwhile lead and plays a young and idealistic youth who turns up at a flat looking for fun. Unfortunately he finds it empty, dozes off and wakes to find out that he's being investigated for murder with a corpse in the next room. The excellent Stanley Baker is the detective doing the questioning, and he gets to use his own Welsh accent for a change. The first half of the film, in which the viewer is almost as befuddled as the Kruger character, is quite taut and inventive and makes good use of the back and forth questioning style.
The second half loses the single location setting and also loses most of the suspense built up in the first section. The solution to the murder isn't really all that clever although it does allow supporting players like Robert Flemyng and John Van Eysson to shine. Gordon Jackson has an oddly small role as a copper which is strange as I saw him playing leads in other movies from the era. Jack MacGowran supplies humour and the one misstep is Micheline Presle, whose character is dullish and never really convinces as an object of lust. BLIND DATE isn't all bad and has plenty of potential, and most viewers will probably get more out of it than I did, but I just didn't connect with this film in its latter stages.
Hardy Kruger (THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX) is the erstwhile lead and plays a young and idealistic youth who turns up at a flat looking for fun. Unfortunately he finds it empty, dozes off and wakes to find out that he's being investigated for murder with a corpse in the next room. The excellent Stanley Baker is the detective doing the questioning, and he gets to use his own Welsh accent for a change. The first half of the film, in which the viewer is almost as befuddled as the Kruger character, is quite taut and inventive and makes good use of the back and forth questioning style.
The second half loses the single location setting and also loses most of the suspense built up in the first section. The solution to the murder isn't really all that clever although it does allow supporting players like Robert Flemyng and John Van Eysson to shine. Gordon Jackson has an oddly small role as a copper which is strange as I saw him playing leads in other movies from the era. Jack MacGowran supplies humour and the one misstep is Micheline Presle, whose character is dullish and never really convinces as an object of lust. BLIND DATE isn't all bad and has plenty of potential, and most viewers will probably get more out of it than I did, but I just didn't connect with this film in its latter stages.