Black Rainbow Reviews

Little known gem!

A supernatural thriller from the late eighties.jason Robards and Rosanna Arquette star as a father and his clairvoyant daughter as they travel around the midwest of American conducting spiritualist meetings.

A surprisingly dark and affecting film that M.Night Shamaylan would be proud of!

Give it a screeing.You wont be disappointed!

Creaky B movie

Hard to imagine this film was made in 1989 - it creaks like something twice its age. Arquette, with her teenage looks and little-girl voice, is totally unconvincing in the lead, as a travelling medium and Robards, as her show-biz dad, has seldom been so wooden in support. The rest of the cast couldn't act its way out of a paper bag, not helped by a clunky script and an unconvincing story line full of red herrings and non sequiturs. At one stage Arquette gets her kit off, which may console her male fans, but this has nothing much to do with any thing else in the film. The naive small-town credulity of the audiences is well done, but even these scenes are long drawn out and the whole movie is slow, slow, slow, culminating in a an unsatisfactory cop-out ending. And yet Radio Times gives it 4 stars!

Strangely compelling

Rosanna Arquette is sultry and enigmatic as the psychic on tour. As the body count rises the mystery deepens in this oddly quite interesting film. Perhaps a tad dated now but kept my attention.

Good watching

One of those underrated films, it is well worth a watch if not just for seeing Rosanna Aruqette in her frillies.

Ham & Cheese To Go

Great subject matter and a script which at times almost reaches the irony it strives for are held back by Mike Hodges' dull direction.

The film is bookended by two 'modern day' (i.e 1989) sequences but the body of it is a limp and lazy attempt at period later 70s. The 'modern' opening is painfully hammy and the final 'modern' bit totally cheesey. Awful music throughout. Ask yourself why you've never heard of it.

Slightly un-nerving

I liked this. It was dark and eerie in places but was really interesting.

A bit dated though.

Didn't grab me

I liked the plot but the treatment was supposed to be more in my head than on screen. This has Arquette at her best but Robards seemed to be going through the motions. Tom Hulce is a poor actor. Mike Hodges work here is far from Get Carter but if this is one of his best then it doesn't say a lot for the rest.

Pointless viewing

I got this film out because it was directed by Mike Hodges, the director of Get Carter and has Jason Robards and Rosanna Arquette starring in it. The film purports to be a supernatural thriller.It is neither. At the beginning, a reporter tracks down a medium who he has met several years beforehand. During this time, the medium (Arquette) who one assumes is actually a fake, begins to predict real events such as a murder and an accident at a nuclear plant. Somewhere along the line, a Mr Burns-type character sends a hit-man to kill her who only ends up killing her Father as he shoots through some form of spirit image of her. The photographs taken by the reporter who meets up with the older Arquette show no images of her so we assume he has met a ghost. Almost any 2 episodes of the X-Files would be better viewing, and any episode of the TV series Medium starring her sister Patricia certainly would.

[Highly rated reviewer]

black rainbow

i quite enjoyed this film, it was quite gripping right until the end, would recomend,

[Highly rated reviewer]

Rosanna's best

Rosanna Arquette has never been better than in this role able assisteded by Jason Robards who was one of Americas finest supporting actors. The contentious subject matter is deftly played and results in a film worth viewing.