Blow Out (1980)

Horror movie soundman Jack Terri (John Travolta) inadvertently records a car crashing into a river while working on a schlocky film called Co-Ed Frenzy.

He manages to rescue the female passenger – a young woman named Sally Bedina (Nancy Allen) – from the river but cannot save the driver, who he later learns was the governor of Pennsylvania.

When his recording reveals the unmistakable sound of a gunshot, Jack begins to suspect that the crash was no accident.

Long before he starred in Pulp Fiction (1994), John Travolta’s best role was here in Brian De Palma’s audio version of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966).

It’s laced with the director’s usual quota of Hitchcockian black humour and startling suspense, and Travolta is marvellous.

Nothing is what it seems in a paranoid mystery that’s overflowing with De Palma’s trademark high style and cinematic technique right up until the knockout, downbeat ending.

De Palma reunited old New York flames Nancy Allen, 30, and John Travolta, 26, for the first time since all three worked on Carrie in 1976. By this stage, Nancy was Mrs De Palma as well as Travolta’s screen love.

Jack Terri
John Travolta
Sally Bedina
Nancy Allen
Burke
John Lithgow
Manny Karp
Dennis Franz
Detective Mackey
John Aquino
Sam
Peter Boyden
Donahue
Curt May
Lawrence Henry
John McMartin

Director
Brian De Palma

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