I love mom and pop video rental stores. In order to compete and differentiate themselves from the major rental chains they end up stocking plenty of non-mainstream stuff. From lots and lots of porn to fringe movies that a place like Blockbuster wouldn't be caught dead having in stock, there's no end to the interesting stuff you can find. Whether these videos are buried treasures or bottom of the barrel nonsense is in the eye of the beholder. During my latest trip to one of these stores I came across a film that no other store would have in stock; Blind Rage.
The plot to Blind Rage is either one of the best ideas ever or one of the worst ideas ever. That makes the whole thing sound rather Dickensian but I doubt even old Charlie Dickens would have dreamt up a movie plot in which five blind men band together to rob a bank. Other movies may claim to have original plots but when was the last time you heard of a movie in which blind guys orchestrate an international bank robbery? The 1970's are often described by film buffs as the modern golden age of cinema and I suspect it's movies like 1978's Blind Rage that they are referring to.
In Blind Rage a criminal organization hits upon the idea of robbing the United States government of 15 million dollars that has been ear-marked for use in post-war Vietnam to make sure other countries didn't fall to Communism under the old Domino Effect. I'm not sure how you can fight Communism with a suitcase full of really high denomination bills but I've never claimed to be an expert on foreign policy. The fool-proof plan hatched to capture these riches is to have a group of blind guys rob the bank in Manila where the money is currently being held. The reasoning behind this unorthodox idea is that nobody would ever suspect that a group of blind men could successfully rob a bank. Under normal circumstances that would be a good reason to abandon the plan but these crooks like thinking outside the box so much that they go ahead and give it a try.
Leo Fong, D'Urville Martin, and some other actors who are pretending they can't see are recruited to take part in this international heist. Normally I'm not quite this sloppy when it comes to giving credit to the people responsible for a movie but -not surprisingly- there's little outside information available about Blind Rage and it would be more trouble than it's worth to re-watch the movie in order to try and figure out what actor played what role. It's a bunch of blind guys, that's all you need to know. The movie tries to differentiate between the characters but the only real back story any of them get is flashbacks to them being blinded. Besides bringing in some of the old "injury to the eye motif" to the movie all the repetition of being blinded scenes do is make the characters seem even more interchangeable.
Behind every great man there is a great woman, even if that man is in a band of sightless bank robbers. In order to teach the robbers how to rob a specialist in working with sight impaired individuals [Sally, who is played by Leila Hermosa] is brought in. From the looks of things Sally was trained to deal with more pedestrian activities but she makes the jump to training handicapped international criminals fairly quickly. Sally not only helps the would-be criminals memorize the layout of the bank but teaches them to shoot at any sound they hear. Having blind robbers isn't enough for Blind Rage, they end up being trigger happy blind robbers.
Against all odds the five crooks somehow pull off the robbery thanks to their grit, reserve, and three weeks of training. That training also makes them so jumpy that they shoot the crap out of a couple of bank tellers who had the bad fortune to be sitting in squeaky chairs but what's a few dead bodies compared to 15 million?
This review is making Blind Rage sound insane which isn't surprising since the movie is insane. It's also, oddly, not a comedy or at least not one in the traditional sense. Instead of the expected jokes at the expense of the blind guys they are treated with as much respect as any other anti-hero protagonist found in 1970's grind house cinema. Blind Rage takes the ridiculous concept and plays it as straight as any other B action movie of the time. All that does is make the movie even funnier than it would have been as a comedy. Since nobody in the movie ever draws attention to how insane the idea of blind guys robbing a bank is the movie never collapses under the weight of the crazy central idea. By the time Fred Williamson shows up for no other reason than to take down some criminals in the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes it's hard to tell whether the movie has gone totally off the rails or has reached its natural conclusion by mutating from a blindsploitation movie to a more traditional blacksploitation offering.
In the end I can't decide if Blind Rage is a subtle comedy or some sort of high-concept bit of weirdness. Either way I like the idea that someone actually decided to make this movie and then eventually release it on video so that it could fester on the shelf of a store for years until I decided to rent it. Other people would have written off Blind Rage but thanks to the effort of any number of people who's names have been lost to history the movie was made and is avaliable for viewing. That takes determination, an urge to triumph against all odds, that parallels the effort put forth by the sight challenged protaginists from the movie. Truly, Blind Rage is an example all of us could emulate... minus the whole bank robbing, murdering, and getting blinded thing of course.
Questions and comments can be sent to gleep9@hotmail.com. If you've finished going blind with rage head on back to either the Third Movie or Main page.