Blow Out Blu-ray Review

• 24th May 2013

After the release of Obsession, Arrow turns their attention to DePalma’s Blow Out.  Back are the various nods to Hitchcock, the split screens, the adukt rated content and a mystery for a lead character to solve.

John Travolta plays terry, a sound engineer currently working on low rent schlock. We meet Terry as he rejects the recorded scream for an intended victim on one of the latest low rent slashers he is working on. We then get to follow him on an excursion with his recording equipment one night as he records the various sounds he encounters in the outdoors; only for him to happen upon what looks like an automobile accident.

With it recorded, a girl saved from the wreckage, and a dead Presidential candidate Terry finds himself embroiled in a mystery that only his sound recording can solve.

DePalma threatened to outdo himself with this 1981 classic. The Blu-ray treatment gives the film a bit clean up, and as per arrow’s usual standards there are various lengthy interviews with various members of the team including Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, lead actress Nancy Allen, Producer George Litto and even a char with DePalma’s composer of the time Pino Donaggio.

Of course what is missing is DePalma himself. But this isn’t going to be very surprising news to anyone who has collected his other works on disc. The film though, does the walking and the talking.

Steven Hurst