A Blind Bargain

A parable of sorts about different types of addiction, Paul Bunnell’s reimagining of the lost 1922 Lon Chaney film centres on a man who sells his mother to feed his habit. The action is relocated to 1970 and so is the style. Viewers au fait with the period and keen to see this kind of project approached with the proper respect, even in the absence of respectability, will be smitten from the moment those big mustard-coloured numbers appear onscreen to announce the date. It’s a rare production that pays such diligent attention to fonts, and it’s a sign of good things to come.

Dom (played by Jake Horowitz, the capable young star of [film id=]Agnes[/film] and [film id=]Castle Freak) is part of the generation of young men who returned from the Vietnam War and went straight onto heroin as the only way of coping with what was left rattling around inside their heads. Basically functional but in no state to hold down a job, especially in an era of surging unemployment, he lives with his mother (Amy Wright), acting as her carer. When sober, he’s diligent, capable and compassionate. For her part, she’s struggling with physical weakness, pain, and the various indignities of advancing age, missing the days when she was a glittering star of the silver screen. They get along well enough most of the time, but she worries about him, and he’s made fearful by her intrusiveness, and more so by the attentions of a social worker who suspects that she could be at risk. Then there are the scary men to whom he owes money, who have made it clear that he’s at risk.

Pressured into attending a clinic where his addiction can be managed, Dom seems to have lucked out when it’s discovered that he’s carrying a rare genetic marker. It’s something he’s inherited from his mother, and the expression of those genes in a woman could make her blood very valuable. How valuable? That’s not immediately clear – but every time Dom hesitates, the offer goes up. Soon enough he’s persuading his mother that she’s going to have a luxury spa treatment, and whisking her off to be sedated, hypnotised and exploited by the sinister Dr. Gruder (Crispin Glover). “He’s really a very nice guy, and he likes cats,” another clinic regular insists.

The deal is further sweetened for Dom by nurse Ellie (Lucy Loken), whose attentions, if not actually disingenuous, certainly prove convenient to the doctor’s plans. She looks like a pin-up girl, and shines at the doctor’s parties, where everyone is magnificently dressed. Soon, though, there is a new star at those events. As something of Gruder’s plan begins to emerge, the film subtly shifts gears, its slick parodic drama giving way to something more psychedelic, more uncertain – even untrustworthy – in tone. Its logical structure gives way to something more dreamlike and we move from a world of domestic interiors, sunny streets, offices and treatment rooms into a more fantastical landscape in the tradition of the generic mad scientist.

In both registers, cinematographer Fransisco Bulgarelli captures the angles perfectly: the theatrical glides, the lingering gaze, the suddenly intimate close-ups on faces when we don’t know whether to expect comedy or violence. The colours are delicious, Ayaka Ohwaki’s perfectly complementing Anita Rinaldi-Harnden’s costumes; the furnishing and cars are full of character, whilst the lab combines psychedelic neons and hip-looking technology with concepts straight out of the silent era.

By situating the film when he does, Bunnell is able to exploit the underlying tensions of the era, from draft-era male insecurity to women’s growing resentment at the restrictions of traditional roles, the impact of a rapidly changing Hollywood and the general divide created by these various phenomena. Yes, the plot arguably gets a bit incoherent towards the end, and there is a tendency to establish characters’ concerns and then forget about them, but this too is absolutely true to form. Importantly, there is always enough of a through-line to keep the story rattling along.

A treat for cineastes, A Blind Bargain also has the kind of one-track, unhinged confidence and charisma that breeds cult followings. Launched at Frightfest, it won’t struggle to win the hearts of genre fans, and though it’s anyone’s guess what the mainstream will make of it, it comes across as a film with staying power.

Reviewed on: 30 Aug 2025