John Travolta, Nancy Allen and director Brian De Palma teamed up to make the brilliant horror flick Carrie in 1976, but the team was nearly at their best 5 years later in this one about movie-makers. The show-offy De Palma, who mostly made thrillers, loved his characters to be all kinds of shades of gray. Mission possible here. Blow Out's set-ups & pay-offs are excellent...and the ending is operatic, symbolic and powerful. That perfect scream is heartbreaking. This violent tragedy is well-crafted, with inspirations from Antonioni's Blow-Up and the incident at Chappaquiddick. So go get some sound effects for the foley department as this 752nd episode of Have You Ever Seen examines the suspense/conspiracy thriller Blow Out.

Well, Actually: at around the 44-minute mark, it should have been The Black Dahlia "was at the end of a pretty poor (box office) run" in 2006, not Femme Fatale. That was released in 2002.

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