Uncle Scoopy's Fun House

Friday

In Darkness

2018, 1080hd

At first glance In Darkness seems to be one of those "blind woman terrorized by bad guy" movies. The woman overhears a murder. The murderer, unaware of her disability, is convinced that she saw him do it. He stalks her. Although he comes close to killing the blind woman, and actually haunts her apartment for a bit, the murderer finally realizes that the woman is visually impaired, and therefore could not have seen him. So the "Wait Until Dark" portion of the film is over quickly.

But the plot opens up. The murderer has to resume stalking the blind woman for a completely different reason. He realizes that the murdered girl must have passed something important to the blind woman. (That's a thumb drive, as it turns out.) Other people also want that thumb drive, and are willing to torture and even kill the blind women to get it. In an ironic twist, the murderer, who had recently been trying to kill the blind woman, now has to keep saving her life from the torturers, not to mention a street thug or two.

And then the plot really gets turned inside out when we find out that the blind woman is far more than a helpless damsel in distress, that the murderer might not even be a murderer, and that the two of them may even have common interests involving high-level geopolitical intrigue.

And then, almost out of nowhere, they are getting it on!

You may think I have spoiled too much, but the plot is only getting started at that point. Those are some of the simpler, more credible plot twists in this operatic frenzy of revenge, betrayals, hidden motivations, and unlikely connections between characters.

The story was written by the ever-sexy Natalie Dormer, and she also stars as the blind woman. I'm not crazy about the gimmicky aspects of her contrived and melodramatic screenplay, but her acting performance is outstanding, and she did manage one praiseworthy element of the script: she wrote herself two nude scenes!

She did not write any nude scenes for the murdered girl, which is unfortunate because the character was played by the luscious Emily Ratajkowski.

Natalie Dormer

Check Other Crap for updates in real time, or close to it.

"Locked Up"

s1e9, 1920x1080

Maggie Civantos

"Scrubs"

Scrubs is a medical-based comedy set in Sacred Heart Hospital, which follows the lives of employees and patients in the hospital. It can be considered successful given that it went for 182 episodes over 9 seasons. There was no nudity. Sarah Chalke was in most of the episodes and is easy on the eye. There were also multiple appearances by actresses such as Heather Graham and Tara Reid that made the show more enjoyable. These collages are from the third season, and were made in 2004.

Scoop's note: Oops. I sorted these wrong. Episodes 15 and 18 are not the first ones in this series, but we'll see them all over the weekend!

Episode 15 My Tormented Mentor

Bellamy Young

Julie Warner - Embeth Davidtz

Episode 18 His Story II

Barrow Davis-Tolot

Bellamy Young

Sarah Chalke

Free Money

1998

Johnny's comments:

The 90s movies don't stop with another bunch of movies today. Never heard of Free Money, which turned out to be a black comedy about a psychotic prison governor nicknamed The Swede (Marlon Brando, who's now the size of a house, in his second-last movie) whose underage twin daughters 'get pregnant' at the same time to two local knuckleheads (Charlie Sheen and Thomas Haden Church) and The Swede pushes the knuckleheads into a dual shotgun wedding with the daughters under strict conditions. Except neither of the twins are pregnant and it's all a ruse.

The Swede treats the knuckleheads like crap so Charlie Sheen hears of a train with soon-to-be discarded money coming through the town and he convinced Thomas Haden Church to rob it with him. Of course it all goes wrong for the two of them and The Swede just makes their lives even more miserable.

Definitely influenced by Fargo except way less violent and made in Canada with an American lead cast. Not a bad little movie with Brando seemingly enjoying playing a complete bastard. It's from that period where Charlie Sheen went by Charles Sheen and made a bunch of movies with Poison lead singer Bret Michaels (who produced Free Money), just before he became a TV star. And interesting to see a movie with actual twins in decent roles, and amusing that one twin shows her breasts and the other is reluctant to do so ...

Worth a look if you're into those 90s black comedies which were all the rage after Fargo.

Holly Watson film clip (sample below)