mosquitodragon’s review published on Letterboxd:
Advanced Mastorakism: Nico masters the giallo.
Ok maybe "masters" is the wrong word. "Has a stab at". Literally. Gloves. Scalpel. Red pencils drawing lines on naked female bodies to indicate where the amateur vivisection will take place. Not as gore-filled as it sounds: seems as though Nico got his basest impulses out of his system with Island of Death and Blind Date is the work of a more mature psycho-Greco grindhouser.
This is actually a largely respectable effort from the man - and perversely, that's my problem with it. Not bonkers enough. It starts promisingly. Jonathan Ratcliff (Joseph Bottoms) is a high-flying corporate ace who wears an "I ❤️ MY DENTIST" t-shirt under his suit jacket. His girlfriend is Kirstie Alley, and she arranges a surprise party to co-incide with a bout of hot sex. I can only imagine she instructed about twenty people to listen at the door and wait until Jonathan makes his usual orgasm noise - that's the moment to rush in with the balloons and the birthday cake. It's weird.
Additionally, Jonathan is stalking his hot blonde neighbour, an issue which is never really explained - you can't help but feel that, because all he wants to do is stare at her when she's naked, Matorakis thought this behaviour didn't require any sort of justification? Just normal healthy sexual predatory practice for a red-blooded male, huh?
Regardless, he ends up bashing his head against a tree branch while fleeing from her boyfriend (who caught him peeping) and going blind as a result. Much is made of this being a psychosomatic condition - something that could very well be reversed over time although there's nothing that can be physically done to correct it. Which makes his subsequent decision making all the more unfathomable. Keir Dullea is an experimental genius who has developed a sort of sonar-sensor housed within a Sony Walkman (most movies get paid for product placement - one gets the impression that Mastorakis just featured the product because it was hot and then hoped Sony wouldn't pay too much attention). In order to achieve what can only be termed a truly shitty computerised facsimile of sight, Bottoms has to undergo surgery to irreversibly sever his optic nerves. He does so (!!!) and is then delighted at the result!
I kept waiting for Dullea to show his true colours as an insane megalomaniac with sinister motives for his invention. But no, he disappears, and this instead becomes a story about how our protagonist will use this very questionable superpower (seems like a massive disability to me, but anyway) to defeat the serial killer who is operating on the nubile young ladies of Athens. I was also expecting a twist. Not sure there was one.
This is OK. Not peak Mastorakis. The following sentence, however, will ensure every Trekkie in reading distance is going to watchlist this movie. Deanna Troi gets naked. You're welcome. Watch long and prosper.