This got two stars on the late night film channel, so I wasn't expecting to like it. But I did. Kim Hunter was believable, the story was unpretentious, believable and engrossing, and it appeared to be shot on location somewhere, either Greece or Turkey. The story is preordained-we know she gets out of the pickle she's in or there wouldn't be a story-so it's mainly a howdunnit, and it succeeds at that, IMHO. Since it's set in a woman's prison, there's less testosterone floating around, and even the ubiquitous guards are pictured as relatively benign (even though they are armed with an unlikely mix of Uzi's AND Kalashnikovs-!), and it starts out a bit like Midnight Express, passes through Little Women (but with lawyers), and winds up in Not Without My Daughter territory. By citing those other films I don't mean to disparage Dark Holiday, aka Passport to Terror-just to give some idea what it's like. Although most of the speaking actors are not Turkish, most of the faces were unfamiliar- which is a plus as far as I'm concerned. So it's about a 40-ish American woman tourist who unintentionally commits an offense that the Turks take seriously, and she winds up in the Istanbul slammer. How she adjusts and finally gets out is the meat of the story, and it's well- done.
Review of Dark Holiday
