Code Red Releasing gives viewers more to fear than looters with their Blu-ray of BLACKOUT!

A storm is coming to Manhattan, and ConEd is already inundated by reports of brownouts as night falls. When the city finally does go all black, every police officer in the city is called back on duty to direct traffic and prevent looting, but they are too late to prevent a Department of Corrections vehicle from being run off the road and the four surviving inmates being transported – political bomber Christie (Robert Carradine, ALOHA BOBBY AND ROSE), rapist Eddy (Terry Haig, THE PYX), strongman murderer Marcus (Victor B. Tyler), and firebug Chico (Don Granbery, STAR 80) – from escaping into a nearby high rise. Killing the super and taking his pass keys, the escapees terrorize their way through the apartments in search of a lot of money and a fast car for their getaway. While Christie is focused on their objective – when not telling terrified victims that they are the real societal parasites – the rest of the unhinged quartet cannot resist having a little fun. When Eddy sexually assaults single Annie Gallo (Belinda Montgomery, SILENT MADNESS), she manages to attract the attention from her balcony of cop Dan Evans (Jim Mitchum, TRACKDOWN) who has happened upon the crash. When the looters and hookers do not stick around to flag down more cops, Dan unknowingly enters the building without backup to take on the madmen.

More gritty Canadian tax shelter thriller than would be "all star cast" disaster movie – complete with one of those posters that features a roster of stills of the name actors at the bottom of the artwork – BLACKOUT is not quite as graphic or sadistic as the premise suggest but it still can be nasty. Although the photography of French cinematographer Jean-Jacques Tarbès (BORSALINO & CO.) and scoring of Didier Vasseur – whose prolific career encompassed everything from French television to hardcore pornography like AND GOD CREATED MAN – is undistinguished, but director Eddy Matalon (CATHY'S CURSE) does achieve some gruelingly tense sequences: the quartet's terrorism of shut-in Henri (Jean-Pierre Aumont, CAULDRON OF BLOOD) has the viewer fearing less for his life than that of his cute little dog while EXECUTIVE SUITE's June Allyson pleas for the sanctity of life fall on deaf ears and Ray Milland (THE PREMATURE BURIAL) who says who readily surrenders money, jewelry, and his car but is brought to tears not by the roughing up of his wife but the destruction of a Picasso. Carradine is the standout from the villains, somehow worse than the rapist, firebug, and murderer because his arrogant idealism seems like just a façade for a deep resentment of the seeming privileged be they wealthy or not but simply living more comfortably than himself. Mitchum makes for a rather flat hero but gets the physical business done from gunplay to a fiery car stunts. The disaster movie aspect is represented with cutaways to ConEd as they try to repair damaged lines or patch into wartime generators while the looting in the streets is contrasted with the building residents helping each other: from a pregnant woman whose husband is away when she suddenly goes into labor, the bickering in-laws at the Greek wedding taking place on the top floor, another woman trapped in an elevator when she left her child at home to run out to the grocery store, said child who is taken in by the wedding party when he leaves the apartment, along with Montgomery's assault victim putting aside her trauma to help rescue and treat her ailing neighbors. The supporting cast includes Canadian film regulars John Wildman (HUMONGOUS), Peter MacNeill (A JUDGMENT IN STONE), and Vlasta Vrana (RABID). The Canadian/French co-production was produced by Cinépix's John Dunning and André Link along with Ivan Reitman (GHOSTBUSTERS)

Released theatrically stateside by New World Pictures and on VHS by Charter Entertainment shorn of roughly five minutes, BLACKOUT first became available on DVD in Canada from producer/distributor Somerville House and in Germany in an odd double bill with A SCREAM IN THE STREETS from Subkultur Entertainment. Code Red's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray represents the original longer cut of the film. It boasts of being a new 2018 scan of the film and the source is mostly clean if not pristine with the stock footage storm cutaways calling attention to themselves along with the optical of the Manhattan cityscape going dark while it is also apparent that the many other aerial shots of the darkened city are day-for-night shots where any actual lights in windows would be less apparent. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track has some minor hiss throughout the film noticeable in the silences while some of the production audio during the ConEd scenes and the police precinct scene appears to have either been less than cleanly recorded. There are no subtitle or caption options. The film is preceded by a brief introduction by Carradine interviewed by Bananaman.