The Last Horror Film And Fade To Black

 The main reason I watched The Last Horror Film is because of Caroline Munro. Not only is she wildly attractive, but she has also done good work. While this movie had potential and good have been good, it just misses the mark. The movie follows Vinny, an obsessive movie fan and aspiring film maker. He has saved up to go to Cannes, where he plans on getting Jana Bates (Caroline Munro) to star in his film. Vinny had delusions, and seems like he might be dangerous. Jana has recently split with her producer husband to take up with another man. Her husband is the first of the people in Jana's orbit to go missing or to be found dead. All signs seem to point to Vinny. But everything may not be as it seems.

It's a great premise for a movie. It even has a very good ending. The fact that it was shot guerilla style at Cannes doesn't make it look shoddy as one might expect. The acting is even pretty good in many parts. But it feels like the film makers didn't have faith in their material, leading to some wild tonal shifts. Even the ending is marred by a tacked on scene of wacky comedy. What makes it disappointing is the movie was almost really good. Don't get me wrong, it's still an enjoyable watch. It's not bad in the "Don't waste your time" sense. It just could have been better if the makers had had more faith in what they were doing. If they hadn't taken the out of making it clear they weren't taking it seriously. 

Fade To Black, on the other hand does seem to take itself seriously. It has a very similar premise.Eric Binford is an obsessive movie fan who becomes equally obsessed with an aspiring actress who resembles Marilyn Monroe. Binford seems to slip into the role of characters from his favorite movies, and through them exacts his revenge on people who are cruel to him. There is a psychiatrist who is working with the local police department, very much against the department's wishes, who tries to help. Unfortunately he seems to be incredibly bad at his job. (At one point he yells at Eric "You're out of your fucking mind!" escalating a situation that was at the point of being calmed down."

Coming out a couple of years before The Last Horror Film, this one does avoid some of the goofiness of the latter. But it also has flaws. Some of the acting is way over the top (surprisingly Mickey Rourke in his second feature role is not one of the guilty parties here). Some of the events just don't make any sense. When they are showing Eric's movie mania, they insert clips from old movies, much like the way it was done in the HBO series Dream On. In all, it makes for a similar experience to The Last Horror Film. It's good, but just misses the mark of being really good. Both movies make the most of their setting, Last Horror Film showing of Cannes and Fade To Black visiting some Hollywood landmarks.

One other note of interest on Fade To Black, it has another famous future movie star besides Rourke. This one you can't actually see though. Gwynn Gilford, who plays the only cop who approves of the psychiatrist and his mission to help (and ends up sleeping with him to boot) was pregnant with Chris Pine during the filming of the movie. Both of these movies mention a theory that violent movies (like these two) drive criminal and even psychotic behavior in society. Neither movie really refutes the idea, instead just seeming to thumb their noses at it. So, while in the end I can't say either is a great movie, both are enjoyable. In fact, they make a good double feature for movie nerds about the dangers of being a movie nerd.