Black Rainbow

1989 "She has just witnessed a murder that hasn't happened yet."
6| 1h43m| R| en
Details

Martha Travis is a medium who makes contact with spirits "on the other side" and connects them with their loved ones still alive, in public performances. Trouble begins when she gives a message to Mary Kuron from her husband, Tom. But Tom isn't dead... yet. And Martha not only knows he will die, she also knows who killed him. And the murderer knows she knows...

Director

Producted By

Goldcrest

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Reviews

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.
Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
trashgang I know that I have seen this years ago on VHS and I watched it again as I am writing this and my only conclusion is that it is a typical flick for the end of the eighties.We all know that the end of the eighties didn't brought us much in the horror genre except a few and this one is a so-called horror that isn't frightening at all. For todays standards it is even a bit lame. There are no effects to spot or any blood at all and that for a horror. Naturally if you don't add blood (like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)) you must add suspense or eerie situations but we don't have it here. The horror lays in the fact that a medium do contact dead people who are in fact still alive. Nobody believes her but once the living are dying like she said things go wrong. There are a lot of famous names here to see but for me it didn't deliver enough suspense like it did back then. For the Kleenex lovers, Rosanne Arquette do show a few things...Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 0/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5
le_chiffre-1 This had the potential to be a good movie -- the basic premise, about a phoney medium who starts to experience real premonitions, was interesting, the actors were excellent, and the gloomy atmosphere of an economically-depressed rural South came through loud and clear -- but it just didn't go anywhere.The movie came off like more of a soapbox for the writer's leftist, secular humanist views than anything. For example, there's a scene in which the psychic starts telling an auditorium of blue-collar workers that if only they were to stop believing in God and the afterlife, they could start to build a better world here on earth. The problem with such propositions is that they don't square with reality. The further we've moved from religion, the baser we've become. Unlike the churchgoing villain of this film, real-life Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was a fan of Richard Dawkins, not of the Bible. Becoming more honest with ourselves and each other by dispensing with our ideals (or, as the writer would probably see it, our hypocrisy) doesn't mean that the world will become a better place. Better a Henry Ford than a Gordon Gekko.Black Rainbow didn't spend enough time developing its characters to justify the frequently grandiose, overwrought, overly-intellectual dialogue. The story, which with a little more work would've resulted in a first-class supernatural thriller, was given a backseat to the incessant moralizing.Too bad Lee Ving wasn't cast as the hit man. That role would've fit him like a black glove! 6 out of 10 stars.
trupie The script is filled with a series of chilling twists which Hodges plays with an absolute and certain confidence - the eeriness as Arquette's first vision starts to come, and her agitation and attempts to cover as what she is performing turns to real; the second vision where she reels off a list of names of the dead trying to contact the living and said people still alive in the audience start standing up puzzled. Hodges' depiction of a seedy con-job slowly becoming darker is beautifully written. The imagery as Arquette's vistas of heavenly meadows and tranquil afterlife cliches start to change into impressions of cancers, empty lives and of people suffering is a stunning and powerful one. The final soliloquy Arquette gives, coming out to taunt the audience - how they want there to be an afterlife so they can confirm their own lives, how if there wasn't an afterlife and what they had was all that they were given, then wouldn't that make her a fake ? - is superbly written and utterly rivetting in delivery. Arquette's performance in the film is exceptional.
ric-29 Black Rainbow is a low-budget mystery with supernatural overtones, a rare genre that I'm particularly fond of. The sound and the picture quality on the print I saw was not great but was certainly watchable. I really enjoyed the premise: a fake psychic starts actually prophesizing people's deaths -- both the why and how -- which makes her a target for a hit man. Arquette is pretty good in the role -- kind of a mystical and ethereal nymphomaniac and Robards is great as always. The plot meanders a bit and sometimes gets a little slow, but I still enjoyed it. The ending didn't really make a lot of sense to me -- maybe I missed something earlier in the movie -- but I was surprised by this ending and liked it even if though it didn't seem to be supported by the rest of the movie.