Akismet

This comes with wordpress and I intend to use it. However after i activate it, it says i need an api key, which is no problem cause i have one, so i click on the thing and then it goes to the plugin?=akismet/akismet.php url and its just a blank page. and nothing shows up. i tried the permissions at 777 and 755 and still nothing. anyone have any ideas what could be wrong? thanks

-Kevin