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

ninfilms Black Rainbow is like most of Mike Hodges films: Get Carter, Croupier and Terminal Man, very intelligent. It is great performance byRosanna Arquette best ever. Also Jason Robards and Tom Hulce are also good.I doesn't rely on special effects to tell a story. It is more or less dealing with whether or not (Martha Travis) Rosanna Arquette is telling the truth. What I found interesting is how Hodges creates a psychological atmosphere on what would happen if someone with that psychic power tells you somebody close to you is dead. That is more disturbing than any special effect.It is a shame Black Rainbow didn't get a proper cinema release. According to Mike Hodges on the DVD commentary of Black Rainbow, both the distributors Palace Pictures (UK) & Miramax (USA) were both suffering financially. Palace Pictures only released the in minimum cinemas, because they were on the verge of getting bankrupt. Miramax decided to release it straight to television.My opinion is this is great film and should get a chance, any interested in this film, its out on DVD on Anchor Bay on Region 2

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.