User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Disturbing slice of Americana-circa the early 1980's- about a dysfunctional family who's road to destruction is evident to the viewers even before the films opening credits.

High on booze and driving his 18 wheeler trucker Don Barnes, Dennis Hooper, slams into a school-bus stuck in an intersection killing some half dozen kids! With Don in the passenger seat is his ten year old daughter Cindy, Linda Manz, or Cebe as she's known by her friends who, like her dad, survives the carnage but has deep emotional scares because of it. It's now five years later with Don expected to be released from prison and both Cebe and her mother Mrs. Kathy Barnes looking forward to him coming home. The home that Dan is to come home to is going to be far worse then the home that he's leavings behind bars in the state penitentiary.

Dennis Hopper's most ambitious project since his controversial 1971 film, that almost had him and some of his cast members busted for drug use, made on location in Peru amply called "The Last Movie". "The Last Movie" was in fact the last movie that Hopper directed in almost ten years until "Out of the Blue" with him being considered box office poison by the Hollywood studios!

In "Out of the Blue" Hopper as ex-con Don Barnes is troubled by his 15 year-old daughter's fixation with both Punk Rock and the late King of Rock & Roll Elvis Presley which have in fact nothing to do with each other. Don's wife Kathy had since become hooked on heroin and is sexually involved with his best friend Charlie, Don Gordon. Getting a job hauling trash, with heavy machinery, at the local garbage dump Don seems to be getting his life back together. It's when one of the children's father-Mr. Anderson, played by David L. Crowley-that Don killed, in slamming into the school-bus, gets him fired from his job as a garbage hauler that he completely goes off the deep end. It's later in an act of revenge that Don and his friend Charlie ambush Mr. Anderson in a darken parking lot smashing his head in!

The end results in Don being fired from his job is that among other things his illicit relationship with his daughter Cebe, before he was busted and sent away to prison, comes to the surface. We then not only find out why Cebe is so emotionally destroyed but why she, because what her dad did to her, can't have any kind of relationship with the opposite sex and has, to the horror of both her parents, become a latent if not openly and in your face lesbian!

The ending of "Out of the Blue" is out of the blue with Cebe, made up to look like the King Elvis Presley,getting her drunk and abusive father Don to relive his experience, and sexual abuse, with her when she was an innocent child. Not innocent anymore Cebe gave her father a taste of his own medicine, or perversion, with him not Cebe getting by far the very worst of it! As for Cebe herself she had another big surprise in store for her drug additive mother Kathy that also, like the movie's namesake, came from straight out of the blue!

P.S Look for TV's Perry Mason's Raymond Burr as Cebe's school appointed psychiatrist Dr. Brean. A both wise and caring man who has a heart, in trying to help Cebe and her mom, that's as big as his stomach.

According to Roger Ebert, when Out of the Blue "premiered at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, it caused a considerable sensation, and Linda Manz was mentioned as a front-runner for the best actress award. But back in North America, the film's Canadian backers had difficulties in making a distribution deal, and the film slipped through the cracks."

What a shame.

One of only seven movies directed by Hopper - there's also Colors, Chasers, Catchfire, The Hot Spot, Easy Rider and The Last Movie - this time in the director's chair wasn't planned. Originally hired just to act, the film nearly was canceled when he asked for the opportunity to rewrite it over a weekend.

What a joy.

Out of the Blue isn't about Hopper's character - an alcoholic truck driver who kills a bus full of children in an accident that's repeated numerous times, growing more violent with each remembrance - but it's about his daughter, played by Manz, who is full of bile toward everyone and everything, loving only Elvis, her father and punk rock.

Hopper considered this movie a follow-up to Easy Rider and tells what would have likely happened to the characters from that film ten years later. And it really is ten years (actually eleven) later, a time past the New Hollywood, as Hopper was just struggling to re-enter the world of acting after getting noticed all over again in Apocalypse Now.

After this movie, Hopper would pull off one of his most out there moments - and that's saying something - blowing himself up in a coffin using 17 sticks of dynamite during an "art happening" at the Rice University Media Center before disappearing into the Mexican desert and finally entering drug rehabilitation. After Rumble Fish, The Osterman Weekend and Blue Velvet, Hopper finally was accepted back.

At this point, he was still lost in the wilderness but making astounding art while there. Linda Manz is all punk rock swagger, even if she isn't sure what it all means. And the ending is violent and pointless and exactly how it should all end. Along the way, you get great performances from Sharon Farrell and Raymond Burr to compliment Manz and Hopper.

Man, this movie.

Working from the original 35mm negative restored by Discovery in 2010, John Alan Simon and Elizabeth Karr's Discovery Productions undertook the digital scan and mastering of Out of the Blue to premiere as an official selection at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, preserving Hopper's landmark film to make it available to new audiences.

Not that many saw it in the past. Luckily, John Alan Simon, then a film critic/journalist, rescued the film from the shelf, secured distribution rights and took it on the road with Dennis Hopper back in 1982 to art house theaters across the U. S. including a 17-week record-breaking run at the Coolidge Corner Cinema in Boston and then NYC and Los Angeles theatrical releases.

"It's incredibly important to us that Out of the Blue be preserved for future generations to experience its emotional impact and as the artistic achievement that helped re-establish Dennis Hopper as an important American director," commented Elizabeth Karr on behalf of Discovery Productions.

"For me, this restoration project was pay-back for all I learned from Dennis Hopper when we originally took Out of the Blue on the road in 1982 after I rescued it from the shelf. He was an amazing artist and friend and Out of the Blue remains as unforgettable as he was and serves as an indelible tribute to the talents of Linda Manz," John Alan Simon from Discovery Productions concluded.

Cebe (the striking young Linda Manz) is an alienated teenager who adores Elvis and who is also strongly attracted to the punk scene. The hero of her life is her father Don (Dennis Hopper, who also directs). Don is a hopeless drunk who's just finished a stretch in prison; Cebe's mother Kathy (the under-rated Sharon Farrell) is a junkie. Family friend Charlie (the great character actor Don Gordon) is an antagonistic creep. Cebe really has no good adult role models in her life, and must face up to the fact that the father that she idealized as a kid is not the man she made him out to be.

Ultimately sad and disturbing, "Out of the Blue" is one of those little films you may not have heard of, but which deserves your attention. With a good script by Leonard Yakir and Brenda Neilson, it illustrates in a devastating manner a situation where the so-called "adults" are even more screwed up than the child. Indeed, there doesn't seem to be much hope for Cebe's future, as a psychiatrist (Raymond Burr, wasted in two brief scenes) tries to warn her.

For all of his real-life problems, Hopper proves once again how masterful he could be as a director. He makes this a grimly compelling film with tons of dreary atmosphere. But the main draw is the great performance by Ms. Manz (who sadly passed away not that long ago), who is alternately sympathetic and antagonistic herself. Her performance is utterly real at all times: while this is a girl who is a little too eager to grow up, she still comes across as vulnerable. Hopper delivers a typically demented performance, and Farrell and Gordon are excellent as well.

Hopper may have been on the outs in Hollywood during this time, but the result is one of his most interesting and affecting pictures. The ending is not to be forgotten.

Filmed in Vancouver, this was originally titled "Cebe", but Hopper changed the title after hearing the Neil Young classic "My My Hey Hey" on the radio.

Eight out of 10.

I couldn't believe how almost nobody had heard of this film when I saw it in the early 00s on video. It truly is an undiscovered gem. Linda Manz, who plays the lead role of Cebe, proves dynamite really does come in small packages - her performance was nothing short of extraordinary. My heart broke every time she acted out, because all I could think of was how her rebellious behavior was nothing but a sad reflection of her mother and father's poor parenting skills and her lack of emotional connection to other people was probably just a manifestation of their absent parenting toward her. At just 16 years old, she should not of been wandering the streets on her lonesome, she should of been put in a stable home environment and sent to school. However, when your mother is a junkie and your father is in and out of jail (and tries to molest you), you don't have much hope in the world. We see her at school only briefly and had she remained there without playing truant, I highly doubt she would be able to establish a connection or bond with the other kids.

Being a teenager is hard enough, and the troubles youth endure are almost endless, but when you come from such a disastrous home environment, your chances for rehabilitation and stability are low. However, Cebe was young and there was a chance for a turn around in her behavior. By the end, however, any kind of glimmer of hope for this young woman is literally obliterated.

The film itself, while somewhat amateur and almost 'no-budget', is extraordinary thanks to some very solid performances. I watched it on a low quality VHS, but I was still engrossed in the story. I felt unbelievably sad for all of the characters and I appreciated the fact that the final moments were realistic and true to Cebe's destructive, anarchist type character. There was no tacked on, Hollywood fairy tale ending for Cebe, because in real life, there rarely is. Yes, the film is quite nihilistic in its pursuit, but it's also very realistic and the method acting gives it a natural quality reminiscent of the work of John Cassavetes. It's a groundbreaking character study that still has such relevance today - perhaps even more so in our apathetic, zombie-like teenage society. I had always a soft spot for this film, having been a wayward, misguided teen myself. Fortunately my home life was more nurturing and solid than Cebe's, so I was able to turn my negativity around before it was too late.

I have hoped for years the Criterion Collection (a company who restore and release classic or important films) would snatch up this title and give it the proper DVD/Blu ray treatment it deserved, remastered with special features and what not. It seems like the perfect title for their catalog... obscure, yet nothing short of amazing.

10/10

This was my second experience watching a movie directed by Dennis Hopper and I must say I can compare it to the feeling I got while watching Easy Rider for the first time. Much like Easy Rider, Out of the Blue is an exercise on freedom, rebellion and the destruction of idols, with a rather bitter ending. There are substantial differences between the two though, especially regarding the directing; Easy Rider was ground-breaking technique for Hollywood in the 60's and exquisite filmmaking, while Out of the Blue at times gets lost in the way, but both are great just the same.

I simply loved the story, not only for personal reasons, but also because it's a rare thing to see a female protagonist depicted like this, in such a real and hypocrisy-free manner, Linda Manz definitely did a great job. A story of troubled teenage years (which aren't?), exploring the character's family relations and the desperate escape from reality, in which the rock'n'roll and punk rock idols play a capital role. We've all heard that story one too many times, but not very often through a girl's eyes and in such depth and rawness. Needless to say the soundtrack is equally great.

It's clear to see that Hopper wasn't sober throughout the movie, and perhaps that even enhances his performance and directing in this case, who knows. All I know is that one's choice to portray certain characters and stories say a lot about that one, the same it says about the viewers who appreciate it. Anyway, although I quite enjoyed the movie, I was a little disappointed at the ending, which was much too over-the-top and felt like a careless shot in the dark. I'm usually one for the ambiguous endings and trips inside the characters' subconscious minds, but only when it's coherent to the tone of the movie so far, and this was not the case. It was literally an "out of the blue and into the black" ending. Coming to think of it, maybe other ending would have seemed too soft, and I respect filmmakers that have the guts to go all the way, so there you have it.

Out of the Blue is a rather offbeat movie that demonstrates a lot of both the benefits and the pitfalls of "method" acting. On the one hand, Linda Manz as the troubled and whimsical adolescent CB and Dennis Hopper as her father did do some amazing acting in this movie; on the other, it's not really clear what their acting accomplished. "Nihilistic" doesn't begin to describe how utterly pointless this whole movie seems. Classifying it isn't incredibly easy either; "slice of life" might be a good working description, though we aren't given much to describe.

On the writers' end, giving a critique of the storytelling first requires asking: what is this movie's story? To be sure, it has continuity: it remains focused mainly on C.B. and her father, and most of the events in the movie are shown in chronological order, with the exception of a few flashbacks. Calling all of this a "story" requires us, however, to go with a terribly loose definition of the word, specifically "stuff that happens followed by other stuff that happens." C.B. and her father do stuff and stuff happens, but none of this stuff ever seems to be going anywhere. Character development is exceedingly minimal, plot development non-existent; there's no climax, and no real resolution.

To be sure, some of the individual events are interesting to watch; my favorite scene in the whole movie is the one in which CB's father gets fired from his job at the garbage dump after an old enemy badmouths him to his supervisor, and then he promptly takes his revenge by plowing over the supervisor's shack with his bulldozer. This incident occurs entirely without any audible dialogue, since all the noise the bulldozer is making would only drown it out anyway. Each of the actors involved therefore is left to demonstrate everything they're doing and saying through body language while a tragic song about the hopelessness of seeking forgiveness from merciless people blares over the soundtrack; at this, I must admit, all three of them did an excellent job.

I must also concede Linda Manz does an amazing job playing herself as the rough-cut CB who copes with her horrendously dysfunctional family life through regressing to childish fidgeting and thumb-sucking, immersing herself in Elvis and Johnny Rotten and punk rock culture, and reciting rambling phrases that initially sound profound ("subvert normality") but really aren't. From what the director's commentary says, Linda Manz's actual life was apparently just as horrendous as CB's, though it also says that she eventually married and settled down and had five kids. Really, this just makes her brilliant performance here more tragic in hindsight, since her character CB deserved a better ending too.

The real problem with this movie is not how bleak and depressing it is, or its extremely downbeat ending, or even the nearly constant stream of foul language everyone insists on using (though these things certainly don't make it any more entertaining to watch). No, its fatal flaw is simply that it never really accomplishes anything. There's no lesson for us here; nothing to be gained emotionally or intellectually by watching the lives of CB, her chronically alcoholic low-life father, and her chronically adulterous junkie of a mother gradually implode. For all their self-destructive behavior throughout the film, the murder-suicide ending seems rather forced, like a second-hand joke in which the teller has forgotten the original punchline and can't think of a new one. As Ben Bova once noted, suicide is the coward's way out for writers as well as their characters; as such, this movie takes the coward's way out.

Moreover, while the method acting greatly enhances the credibility and spontaneity of the characters, having the director be similarly laid-back and spontaneous produces rather mixed results. Concerning the supposed incestuous subtext between CB and her father, for instance, I honestly don't see any until near the end, when he starts drunkenly jabbering about CB's sexual inexperience and calling for his drinking buddy Charlie to take her virginity. Up until then, CB and her father seem to be rather friendly with each other, the only indication that her affection for him is going sour also being near the end when her counselor Dr. Brean can't get her to tell him why she's cut her father out of her plans for the future.

If anything, the creepy scene in which she finally slays her father doesn't seem to be an act of revenge at all, but a preemptive strike. The director's commentary notes that Sharon Farrell, who plays CB's mother, was actually flubbing her line and speaking out of turn when she starts weeping and saying she doesn't want her daughter "to be a dyke" while she's arguing with her husband. If so, the director was being rather lazy not to re-shoot the scene, or at least edit that part of the footage out in post-production. As it stands, this scene suggests that the mother was making a wholly credible prediction that such a "corrective" rape would only push CB that much further into "dyke" territory.

The director's commentary also reveals that the original script for this movie was supposed to have Dr. Brean rescue CB by helping her break herself free from her dysfunctional family, and that they never told Raymond Burr, who played him, that they had abandoned this plot and this wasn't really his movie anymore. To be sure, maybe this original ending might have been a little too upbeat to be a credible ending to this movie; real-life problems tend to be too complicated to lend themselves to solutions simple enough to require only ninety minutes on a movie screen to portray. Considering the movie these actors and actresses ended up making instead, however, I'm inclined to think the movie would have been better had they at least tried to make the original ending work, even if they'd failed. Alas, we'll probably never know now.