mark.waltz This comedy thriller needs to be seen to be believed. It's half mystery/half Three Stooges, and a stunning look at Central Park in the mid 1960's. Rock Hudson is a noted psychiatrist, approached by Jack Warden in the middle of the park, and asked to assist him with a former patient. But there's more to it than meets the patient's closed file, as we find out when the former patient (Alejandro Rey) tries to strangle him, and later when a hot tempered dancer (Claudia Cardinale) arranges for a rather abrupt encounter with him along the Central Park bridal path, overlooked by the Dakota.The encounter reveals to Hudson that more is going on than he was initially lead to believe, but Hudson manages to keep one step ahead of her, eventually breaking the ice until Warden demands that he breaks it off with her. But there's no way that's going to happen, leading to twice as much intrigue, verbal humor and physical pratfalls, and enough trips through Central Park to keep a pedicab in business for six months. The many paths and bridges of Central Park almost become like characters, and much of it remains unchanged. But a good movie set in a popular city needs much more than just location to make a good film, and much of that involves not only the scenery but the farce as well. One sequence in the middle of a long gone storage house near the reservoir actually has Hudson swinging around with a canoe over his shoulders, ultimately spraying his enemies with paint. It's all very finny, but this makes it seem closer to a Bugs Bunny cartoon than a 60's thriller. There's some fun supporting performances by well known character players, especially Anne Seymour as an Eve Arden like secretary who obviously tells boss Hudson how to run his office. I guarantee that you won't be bored, but you'll be laughing at it, not just with it.

gerrythree Aside from all too few location scenes of Manhattan in 1964, the movie "Blindfold" is a low-budget affair that wastes the acting talents of all involved in this movie. One scene stands out for me, as Rock Hudson's character is talking to the general, played by Jack Warden. They are supposedly flying in a turboprop airplane, yet their seats face each other, the window is covered by a long curtain and you see no one else, not even the pilot. Just a studio set, Universal wouldn't spring for filming in a mock up of a real plane or even in a real small plane. As usual throughout this movie, director Philip Dunne does an abysmal job staging the scene. What is surprising to me is that Joseph MacDonald, the director of photography, does such as bad job lighting up this scene and most of the movie outside of the scenes in Central Park. DP MacDonald usually was aces, as in westerns like "Rio Conchos" and "Alvarez Kelly." The less said about the story, the better. This movie was co-writer Dunne's last screenplay and he quit while he was at the bottom. I still can't figure out why everyone made such a big deal about kidnapping the scientist, there is no explanation of what he was working on. Beautiful Claudia Cardinale wanders about the movie looking upset. In a chase scene at the end through a swamp, she wears a tight blouse that the director makes sure never gets wet, don't want to show too much of her assets. The one word that describes this movie is "tired." No one wanted to do more then turn out about ten reels of film. Flat lighting, cheap sets, badly edited chase scenes and dull characters. Rock Hudson as a famous psychiatrist who has a problem with his girlfriend? This movie was a good way for Hudson to prepare for his later career on his series "McMillan & Wife," where cheap production values, bad lighting and shoddy writing were the norm for that 1970s series.Except for the fine actors in this movie, I can't think of one positive thing to say about "Blindfold."

Edgar Soberon Torchia The original poster of this film read in big characters: "Behind the blindfold is the greatest security trap ever devised!" These formulaic promotional campaigns can kill a movie, as in this case, an above average comedy drama that today is almost forgotten. Better than one could expect, considering that Philip Dunne as a filmmaker was not among the best visual stylists from New York, "Blindfold" benefits from his talent for words and structure. He was a very good scriptwriter and for this comedy he wrote a fine script with clever dialogue (with the collaboration of theater instructor and writer W.H. Menger) for an above average mystery thriller based on a novel by Lucille Fletcher, the author of the famous radio plays "Sorry, Wrong Number" and "The Hitch Hiker". Rock Hudson might not have been as solid an actor as others who in the early 60s were in similar films (as Cary Grant in "Charade" or Gregory Peck in "Arabesque" and "Mirage"), but he excelled in romantic comedies and there's a good amount of elements from this sub-genre in "Blindfold", sharing screen time and space with Claudia Cardinale, who also knew how to be very funny. As a matter of fact I prefer Hudson paired with beautiful brunette leading ladies of European origin (Gina Lollobrigida, Paula Prentiss, Leslie Caron, Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons and Claudia) than with Doris Day or Julie Andrews. Recommended.

Marco Trevisiol This thriller/comedy never reaches great heights but is solidly entertaining throughout and that is more of an achievement then one might give it credit for. To be sure, the plot elements and romantic element of two people who can't stand each other for most of the film but eventually fall in love has been done a million times before in various films over the years.But usually, films containing these elements come across as hackneyed, tiresome and dreary in some shape or form but Blindfold never feels like that and is consistently good fun throughout its journey. Credit for that must go to Hudson and Cardinale who work well as a team and Hudson is especially effective in the film's more comic moments. Jack Warden is reliably effective in his supporting role.While Blindfold is no classic on any level the solid entertainment it provides is something Hollywood consistently struggles to achieve to this day in films created for that purpose.If you want to see a really bad example of this genre, see the abysmal pseudo-hip caper comedy A Fine Pair starring Hudson and Cardinale again which is a disaster on all levels.