The Sony Walkman Giallo

“The ulitimate hi-tech thriller” only if you think
Pong is the ultimate video game challenge.

A future murder victim; a future sit-com star-turned-Fat Actress-turned-QAnon conspiracist; a future Star Trek counselor; two established actors with rapidly dropping Q Scores grabbing a quick buck and a Greece vacation on their way down— all appearing in one of my favorite genres, the giallo. And all of them brought together by a director whose most notorious film featured, among other things, a man pissing in a wealthy socialite’s face and fucking a goat.

These were the ingredients that drew me to Nico Mastorakis’ 1984 thriller BLIND DATE (a.k.a. Deadly Seduction). So, why was I so bored watching it?

Things start off well enough. A young woman in serious need of some dental work leaves her amusement park date and takes a cab home. We already know before she closes the car door that the cab driver has sinister intentions as the camera is careful—in the beginning, at least—to only show his hands and feet. And, sure enough, as our young woman is showering (tits at three and a half minutes in; Nico doesn’t waste time) the cab driver is letting himself into her darkened apartment because his victim—like so many characters in thrillers and horror movies—hasn’t bothered to turn on any lights for the sake of maintaining a spooky atmosphere. When she steps into the living room, certain she’s heard something but still not switching on a single lamp, she’s grabbed from behind, her mouth covered by a chloroform-soaked cotton pad. A second later she’s in the cabbie’s makeshift operating theater, about to get dissected. If only she’d thought to flip a light switch.

Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk.

Suddenly we’re watching Joseph (The Black Hole) Bottoms strutting through the streets of Athens, dressed in a tan suit and a white t-shirt reading “I ❤ My Dentist” (your guess is as good as mine). Bottoms plays Jonathon, an American marketing executive whose job seems to consist of boning his assistant, Claire (a pre-Cheers, pre-weight-gain and, presumably, pre-batshit Kirstie Alley) and watching commercial photo shoots. It’s during one such photo shoot for a travel company promotion that Jonathon thinks he recognizes one of the models, Mary Ann (the late Lana Clarkson, who gets an “introducing” credit even though she had already been in a few films prior), his former girlfriend from the U.S. Except the model’s name is Rachel, and the U.S. Embassy has no information about her under either identity. 

“My E-meter is all warmed up and ready for you.”

So, what’s a guy to do? Maybe approach her and ask? Something as simple as, “Excuse me, you look like someone I knew in the States. Are you…?” should do the trick. Worst case scenario, she misreads this as a lame pick-up line—and most likely would, given Jonathon comes across as a smug asshole—and tells him to fuck off.

Or he could stalk her, which is exactly what Jonathon chooses to do. The movie tries to explain away Jonathon’s decision with a few quick flashbacks to when Jonathon and Mary Ann were attacked on the beach by a group of thugs, who beat the shit out of Jonathon and raped Mary Ann. The incident resulted in Mary Ann landing in a psychiatric hospital and Jonathon barred from seeing her lest his presence trigger memories of that night. Yes, this is the movie’s logic: approaching Mary Ann/Rachel directly could traumatize her; better to stand outside her apartment building with a pair of binoculars and spy on her instead.

Lana Clarkson has a Nice Guy looking out for her.

Meanwhile, a hooker (Marina Sirtis) turns her last trick when she takes the scalpel-wielding cabbie back to her place. 

Counselor Troi in more traditional Betazoid wedding attire.

Jonathon’s stalking blows up in his face when Rachel’s boyfriend Dave (James Daughton of Animal House fame) catches him watching them at a mountainside make-out spot. Jonathon eludes Dave in a chase only to run face-first into a tree branch, which may not have been intentionally funny, but I laughed anyway.

Somehow, this collision with a tree blinds Jonathon even though, as his doctors stress, there is no damage to his optic nerves. “You should not be blind,” says specialist Dr. Steiger. Dr. Steiger is played by Keir Dullea, perhaps best known for starring in the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, so it’s only fitting that his appearance marks Blind Date’s hard left into sci-fi territory, if “sci-fi” were short for “Science? Fuck it!”

The doctor has invented a way for Jonathon to “see” that bypasses the eyes, implanting a “minute, platinum electrode plate” in his skull that interprets Sonar-like signals sent to his brain as images, something he calls CompuVision. (Isn’t interesting the number of sci-tropes that hinge on an ableist mindset?) And how are these Sonar-like signals received? Perhaps with a small device that’s worn like a hearing aid. Or maybe Dr. Steiger must remove one of Jonathan’s eyes and replace it with a glass one that contains all the necessary technology for receiving the necessary signals. Or, if you’re Nico Mastorakis, you could just give Johnny a Sony Walkman and a bunch of bullshit and hope nobody notices.

“And after we hook up your CompuVision device we’ll get
you a Swatch watch for the pain.”

Seriously. There isn’t even an attempt to disguise the Walkman and headphones with different casing or decals or just wrapping the fucker in tin foil. Nope, it’s just a Sony Walkman with all its branding in place. Though Dullea is clearly phoning it in, he deserves an honorary Oscar® for maintaining a straight face as he explains how the fast forward button activates the device and the rewind button activates the cassette inside the unit. Despite Dullea’s efforts, his explaining how this Sony Walkman is really a CompuVision device was the moment I gave up on this movie.

Vision restored!

Joseph Bottoms, the Not-Quite-Blind Avenger.

Alas, there’s a lot more movie to go as we watch Jonathon try out his new “eyes,” starting with his resuming his creeping on Rachel, going so far as breaking into her apartment and watching her nude slumber (just a reminder, he’s our protagonist). Then he heads to the subway avenge his beating and robbery by three sexually ambiguous hoodlums prior to his being outfitted with the magical Walkman. He handily beats the shit out of them with a lead-filled cane. He also plugs his, um, CompuVision device into his video game console, apropos of nothing, nearly giving himself a brain hemorrhage in the process.

In case you’re wondering, the movie hasn’t forgotten about its killer. While Jonathon is taking his special Walkman for a test drive, the homicidal hack is still killing his fares, including a young couple on a date, whom he politely allows to enjoy one last orgasm before slicing them up. The cabbie has to get in line before he can attack his next victim, who comes home to discover doddering old man hiding in her bathroom hoping to sneak a peek, something that’s played off as harmless fun instead of a dial 112 situation (seriously, movie, what is wrong with you?) As always, our killer waits until the victim gets in a gratuitous nude scene before whipping out his scalpel.

It’s OK, he’s just a pervert, not a killer.

Except, this time the Jonathon happens to be strolling by the victim’s apartment building when she screams. Jonathon runs inside to investigate, but he’s not in time to prevent the woman’s murder, and he nearly gets killed himself trying to escape the killer. However, he does inadvertently get some clues to the killer’s identity, and the audience does, too, when the camera shows the back of the murderer’s head and his distinctive hair color.

Prepare for more bullshit: It turns out that when Jonathon nearly fried his brain plugging into his game console, he gained some extra abilities, like being able to hear voices from within the passing cab and get more detailed images when he rewinds the tape in his Walkman/CompuVision. Yeah, the movie is pulling more things out of its ass than a Club Inferno Dungeon video, but I still found Jonathon’s sudden development of special abilities easier to believe than that goddamn seeing-eye Walkman.

Jonathon is also able to determine—via the special ability of knowing his thriller tropes— that the killer cabbie’s next victim will be none other than Rachel. If only he can get to her apartment without killing himself or anyone else as he speeds through the streets of Athens in his Renault Farma.

The Renault Farma: Giving the small pickup the meter maid
cart makeover drivers didn’t know they wanted.

Eager to Sleaze

On the surface, Blind Date seems like promising trash. As always, Mastorakis is eager to sleaze. Though the murder scenes are fairly restrained, the movie makes up for the scant amount of blood with liberal amounts of skin and misogyny, with the camera lingering over a victim’s bare breasts while the killer prepares to cut into them. There is also plenty of what-the-fuckery, such as when Claire plans a surprise birthday party for Jonathon, arranging for guests to arrive while she and Jonathon are fucking, which, “Surprise!”

Also, get the fuck out!

Lana Clarkson (right) wears the finest
’80s street(walker) wear.

And then there’s the cast. At the time Blind Date was released, Joseph Bottoms and Kier Dullea were the “big” names in the cast, but viewers today will likely be more interested in getting a peek at Kirstie Alley and Marina Sirtis before they became TV stars and Lana Clarkson before she became a tragedy. Unfortunately, none of the women get much to do. Sirtis doesn’t do much beyond stripping down to a pair of bikini panties and screaming, but if you’ve been wanting to see Counselor Troi topless, I guess that could be enough. I’d like to say that Clarkson, who achieved greater fame when she was murdered by Phil Specter in 2003 than she had for any of her film and TV roles, is a standout as Mary Ann/Rachel, but her role is largely decorative, most of her time on screen spent modeling swimwear and some of the worst of early 1980s fashions (the clothes in this movie are so atrocious I suspected actresses requested nude scenes to limit the amount of time they had to spend wearing them). She was undeniably attractive, but she showed more acting chops in Barbarian Queen.

Only Alley gets much to do, and she does it fairly well, though her character is largely on the sidelines (and not really necessary to the story, in all honesty). For the past couple decades Alley has gotten more attention for her struggles with her weight, her devotion to Scientology, and being someone next to whom Sean Young stands to appear sane by comparison, so it was nice to be reminded that she was once a gifted comic actress, something Mastorakis must have picked up on as Claire is often this movie’s comic relief.

A pre-fame Valeria Golina also makes an
appearance, and this is as much of her that appears.

But for all its WTF storytelling and pre-fame celebrity titties, Blind Date is only intermittently entertaining. Like Mastorakis’ 1990 erotic thriller, In the Cold of the Night, Blind Date wastes too much time on extraneous scenes that only bloat the runtime and slow the movie’s momentum, while completely ignoring other story points introduced earlier (i.e., it’s not entirely clear if Rachel is Jonathon’s ex Mary Ann). At 90 minutes, Blind Date would be a trashy good time, but it’s 103 minutes and by the time you hit the 40-minute mark you’ll feel every one of them. In the end, watching Blind Date is better than going on one, but like a real blind date, you’ll be wishing it ends much earlier than it does.

RANDOM TRIVIA: The end credits tease a sequel to Blind Date — Run, Stumble, Fall — that never materialized. However, I’d argue that In the Cold of the Night, with its mix of tits and cheap sci-fi, is its spiritual sequel. Further bolstering that argument is that Cold star Shannon Tweed was originally cast in the role of Claire.

The Hot Promises of the NC-17 Rating Turn Cold — Again

The cover art for the Vinegar
 Syndrome release.

When the NC-17 rating was introduced in 1990 it was supposed to carry the weight of an X without any of the stigma associated with it. It was the rating that let moviegoers know that while a film was for adults only, it was not porn.

That’s all well and good, but that didn’t stop most of us from thinking that any movie slapped with an NC-17 must be chock full of explicit sex. Or was that just me?

I know it’s what I thought when I spotted the 1990 film IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT on a Blockbuster shelf in the early ’90s. At the time, I was not aware that Blockbuster did not carry NC-17 films or that In the Cold of the Night had been cut to receive an R. All I knew was this movie was a trashy erotic thriller and, according to the VHS box on the Blockbuster shelf, it was rated NC-17, meaning it would be extra trashy. I eagerly grabbed that fucker and rented it.

The tacky VHS box that I
saw on the Blockbuster shelf in
the early 1990s.

Needless to say, my expectations were quickly dashed. It had plenty of titties and f-bombs, but nothing that made it dirtier than your standard R-rated movie. Of course, it was an R-rated movie, but would an uncut version really be much different? Very few NC-17 movies ever seem to live up to such a severe rating, the line between an R and NC-17 often so thin as to be undetectable. Usually it means a penis or two appears on screen, but, frustratingly, not always. A story with a lot of sex seems more likely to get an NC-17, but said sex wasn’t necessarily hardcore. It could, as Kirby Dick pointed out in his documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, just come down to the actors thrusting one too many times. At least XXX porn is unambiguous. NC-17 is a sham.

And yet I fall for it every goddamned time. It’s why, when I discovered that Vinegar Syndrome released the original NC-17 cut of In the Cold of the Night on Bluray and DVD combo, I had to purchase a copy of this movie. Maybe this director’s cut would be the “good” version of the movie Blockbuster denied me back in 1990s. (Spoiler alert: this is a Nico Mastorakis film. There is no good version.)

In the Cold of the Night’s protagonist, Scott (blond n’ bland Jeff Lester), is a successful Los Angeles photographer, specializing in photos of scantily clad babes, some of whom will happily spend the night with him. After all, who can resist rolling around on that lighted-up waterbed of his? But Scott’s post-coital slumber is disrupted by a nightmare in which he creeps through a spacious single-story mansion, discovers a beautiful woman showering and then proceeds to strangle her. When Scott wakes up he’s in the middle of choking his real-life bed mate, Lena (Shannon Tweed). Lena is a surprisingly good sport about Scott’s sleep strangling, but then this shouldn’t be too surprising as her character is written essentially to be an inflatable sex doll come-to-life (“I’m a one-night kind of girl. Guys usually invite me to dinner before, not after,” she quips). His best friend (Brian Thompson) makes jokes about the dreams and a psychiatrist (David Soul) assures Scott his mental health is sound, but neither allay Scott's worries about the recurring nightmares.

A glowing waterbed may not promote a restful night’s sleep,
but fuck it, it looks cool.

Then come the hallucinations, Scott going into a trance during a photo shoot as he sees himself prowling the mystery woman’s home. Later, while at Venice Beach, he sees what appears to be a Ramones wannabe wearing a t-shirt with an airbrush portrait of the woman of his homicidal dreams. He chases Ramones Wannabe to get his shirt and find out where he got it (Ramones Wannabe ran because he stole the shirt, it not occurring to him he could’ve just lied and said a friend gave it to him). This sends Scott to one of those tacky beachside t-shirt shops, where he tries to get info about the woman’s identity from the proprietor (John Beck), but, as we all know, the relationship between a mediocre airbrush artist and his clientele is strictly confidential and cannot be breached. Scott leaves him his card, nonetheless.

The next day who should show up at his door but the woman of his nightmares, Kimberly (Adrianne Sachs), making this visit specifically to tell Scott to fuck off. Undaunted, Jeff turns up the charm and before you know it, Kimberly is parking her motorcycle (yes, she rides a motorcycle) in his studio and letting him drive her to a lunch date with her mother. Scott drives a restored classic Chevy, by the way, this being a movie where the lead characters are given unique vehicles in lieu of interesting personalities.

Adrianne Sachs’ nuanced portrayal of a stoned woman experiencing
a stroke while checking out a man’s package.

It’s not long after that that Kimberly’s stunt double is giving Scott’s stunt double a motorcycle ride through her house (yes, through her house). The boxy mansion she calls home is, unsurprisingly, the same mansion Scott has visited in his dreams. Though the motorcycle ride ends at the bedroom, the couple decides to keep their hands to themselves—until Scott barges in on Kimberly taking a shower (“What took you so long?” she asks). At this point the movie idles in Skinemax territory. Sachs’ breasts, which are just a little too firm and perfectly shaped to be true, get a lot of screen time, though I imagine the MPAA watchdogs were more troubled by the millisecond appearance of Lester’s flaccid penis, which most definitely was not in the R-rated cut. The two actors may have thrust and gyrated more times than the MPAA is comfortable with as well. Personally, I’d demand cutting a sequence in which Lester pours a bowl of marbles onto Sachs’ body and rubs them over her breasts, not to ensure an R rating but because it’s stupid. But was any of this hot enough to justify the NC-17 rating? No, not even for 1990.

Kimberly’s involvement with Scott is not coincidental, of course, and neither are Scott’s dreams. More surprising are the revelations of a mind control experiment and Marc Singer’s participation in this movie.

In the Cold of the Night could be described as Body Double crossed with Videodrome and not as good as either. Among its many problems is its being nearly two hours long, which is at least twenty minutes longer than the movie needs to be, and you’ll feel every excess minute. There’s a lot of extra fat in the movie’s first half, with scenes that exist for contrived reasons, like Scott fleeing his home to sleep among the homeless on the beach, just to set up his spotting the Ramones Wannabe the next morning. (He also treats the homeless guy on the neighboring bench to an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, something I think was meant as comic relief, but the scene’s neither funny nor necessary.) Other scenes—interrogating John Beck’s t-shirt shop owner; that lunch with Kimberly’s mom, played by Tippi Hedren(!)—seem to exist solely to give some name actors screen time, actors who deserve a much better movie.

The lopsided casting is another one of the movie’s flaws, but it’s also what makes it such a curiosity. In the Cold of the Night is brimming with overqualified actors in small roles. Brian Thompson is married to Mastorakis’s daughter, so maybe he was just helping out his father-in-law, but how to explain David Soul, John Beck and Tippi fucking Hedren being in this thing? Even Beastmaster star Marc Singer and direct-to-video erotic thriller queen Shannon Tweed seem out of this movie’s league, especially when they’re acting opposite such uninspiring leads. Jeff Lester (a.k.a. Mr. Susan Anton) later went on to guest on Baywatch, and “Baywatch guest star” perfectly describes his talent level as an actor (he’s doing quite well as a director today, so good on him). Adrianne Sachs never landed a guest spot on Baywatch, though her talent for modeling swimwear was perfect for that show. She’s a less than ideal choice to play the femme fatale in an erotic thriller, although I guess her willingness to get naked early and often should count for something (Sachs later went on to appear in Alien Intruder, in a significantly smaller role 😕). Ultimately, I wish Mastorakis had spent less money on notable supporting players and splurged on more capable leads.

It’s clear Mastorakis was aiming for something a little more highbrow with In the Cold of the Night, but no amount of Miami Vice-inspired art direction (i.e., lots of neon decor) or notable B- and C-list names in the cast can completely cover up the director’s low-brow sensibilities. Just enough of Mastorakis’ signature tackiness bleeds through to make you wish he just gave up this attempt at being a half-priced DePalma and made the type of crass exploitation movie audiences expect from the director of Island of Death. In short, if he was going to make an NC-17 movie, he should’ve fucking made it count.