Black Rainbow

(UK)

Goldcrest. Director Mike Hodges; Producer John Quested, Geoffrey Helman; Screenplay Mike Hodges; Camera Gerry Fisher; Editor Malcolm Cooke; Music John Scott; Art Director Voytek

Rosanna Arquette
Jason Robards
Tom Hulce
Mark Joy
Ron Rosenthal
John Bennes

This enjoyable supernatural thriller is set in the fundamentalist society of crumbling industrial towns where folks have a deep-rooted faith in the spiritualist movement. Pic opens with journalist Tom Hulce tracking down traveling clairvoyant Rosanna Arquette to fill in the background to a story he himself was involved in some years before.

During one act Arquette receives a message from a murdered man to pass on to his wife in the audience. Unfortunately he is not dead and his wife gets rather upset. Later that night the man is killed in his home.

Small-town reporter Hulce sets about uncovering the scoop, and follows Arquette and Jason Robards to their next town. There he gets drunk with Robards and sleeps with Arquette, but still doesn't believe her 'gift.' That night she predicts even more deaths, and again her vision comes true.

Arquette is excellent as the strange but seductive Martha. She has an ethereal quality combined with innate sexuality. Robards is in his element as the drunkard father. Hulce is intelligently restrained.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1990. Running time: 113 MIN.

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