***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.
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.