THE LAST HORROR FILM aka FANATIC

1982/Director: David Winters/Writers: Judd Hamilton, Tom Klassen

Cast: Caroline Munro, Joe Spinell,  Judd Hamilton, Devin Goldenberg, David Winters, Susanne Benton, Filomena Spagnuolo( Mary Spinell)

I am certain even the most modest horror film fan has heard of Hammer and Bond girl Caroline Munro. Her long brunette hair and statuesque features are simply stunning and she has starred in some fairly memorable horror flicks like The Abominable Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Slaughter High and the shlocky Italian sci-fi film Starcrush. One of her co-stars in Starcrush was New York City veteran character actor Joe Spinell. Spinell’s name may be less familiar to many except for the cognoscenti of b-films. He is more known as a supporting actor and had small roles in The Godfather, The Seven-Ups, Rocky and Taxi Driver before he had his first starring role in the 1980 William Lustig splatter film Maniac. We will get to Maniac in the second part of this double feature and instead will start off with what is sort of a follow up to Maniac pairing Munro and Spinell up again. That film is 1982’s The Last Horror Movie or Fanatic was it was originally released as on DVD. I got a hold of the Fanatic version of the film and not the new Troma release of the movie that is supposed to include a few extra minutes of scenes and some extras including commentaries and interviews. I have to be honest I never listen to DVD commentaries. Simply never. So I do not know if I going to go out of my way to find the Troma release but we will see. I would be interested in the interviews with Spinell’s buddy Luke Walter and Maniac director William Lustig who seems to have stopped directing films (his last being Uncle Sam, which I liked, in 1997) and now produces and is the head honcho at Blue Underground DVD.

I have seen Maniac a few times actually and was excited when I recently read about The Last Horror Movie and that Spinell and Munro had teamed up yet again for a horror/stalker type of film. Of course I expected it to a gore fest like the often over the top Maniac was and was surprised to find that the film was modest in the shock department. There are some gruesome deaths and blood shed to be sure but the film is actually a rather clever poke at slasher film cliches, the world of obsessed fans and the snooty films film makers they pursue. The film is a horror film but is a comedy as well and yet never becomes a wittless spoof. The film was shot guerilla style (i.e. without shooting permits and permission) at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and that in itself makes the film a curiosity. Slasher type films usually are relegated to a few overused locations, the most notorious being camp grounds or high school/college campuses. The backdrop of Cannes adds a little excitement to the low budget production it would not have been able to achieve in yet another sorority house. And while Munro looks gorgeous as usual and it si fun to look for the fleeting faces of celebrities scuttling from ceremony to ceremony the star of the show is Joe Spinell. He is creepy and pathetic as cab driver and loser Vinny Durand who is beyond hope in his delusions that he is a great film director and that horror queen Jana Bates (Munro) will star in his ‘next’ (actually first and only) horror feature if he could only get the opportunity to talk to her and pitch his idea. He does not get much support from his co-workers or his mom (played by Spinel’s real mother Filomena Spagnuolo). The early scenes of the film of Vinny pleading with his mother to support him were shot in Spinell’s real New York City apartment. Mom just wants Vinny to give up his obsessions and have a plate of macaroni but Vinny is off to Cannes France to meet Jana and shoot his brilliant horror film.

All he has to do now is have the chance to talk to Jana and he is certain she will go along with the project. But first he has to contact her and that is not easy as she is the hot time at this year’s film festival with the judges even selecting her performance in her new film Scream over actresses like Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda. She is always accompanied by her entourage that includes her current boyfriend Alan (played by Munro’s real life husband at the time Judd Hamilton who also wrote and produced the film). Also hovering just outside the shadows is her estranged and former mentor husband Bret Bates.  While the relationship is on the skids Bates still manages Jana and produces her films. As well Jana is the object of adoring horror fans and paparazzi. Vinny begins having melt downs as his attempts to pitch his idea to Jana or her agent are foiled one after the other. Soon bodies start popping up and Jana is stalked by a masked cameraman. Notes are sent telling future victims ‘you have made your last picture show’. Among some of the people stalked and eliminated is director David Winter (formally Mr. Linda Lovelace) who plays Stanley Kline a horror film director with a popular but revolting, in Vinny’s opinion, slasher film.

Now I am trying to change some of my approach here and I am giving less spoilers to films and shorter synopsises. I do not think there is anything terrible about spoilers but I am just trying to do something different for some reviews. I feel it is sort of hard not to give something away here and there but in the case of The Last Horror Movie there are actually a couple little twists and turns that would be ruined if I gave them away now. While the film is low budget it has some clever little moments. It works as a satire of the whole horror film business as well as the superficiality of awards ceremonies in general. In moment we will explore Mania which came out before Last Horror Movie and, as I said already, also featured Munro as Spinell’s object of obsession. While Vinny is obviously an extension or reinterpretation of the character Zito in Maniac there are differences to be sure. I would actually recommend seeing Maniac first then this film so you can see some of the similarities and, I believe, deliberate differences in the characters. Spinell is a bit funnier in this film and the conflicts with his mother who admonishes him constantly for his ‘crazy ideas’ is funny without ever becoming corny or contrived. The last line of the film between Vinny and his mom is worth the wait. An interesting little film.

MANIAC

1980/Director: William Lustig/Writers: C.A. Rosenberg, Joe Spinell

Cast: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone, Tom Savini

For my article about the William Lustig film Maniac I simply scanned over the disk for some new screen captures and watched a few scenes over to refresh my memory. I will probably rewatch the film in its entirety soon but I have seen the movie a few times in the past and will rely more on my general impressions of the movie from past viewings than from a fresh rewatch. I first rented the film on VHS back when I lived in San Antonio Texas. It was time when I was renting stuff I read from films books I owned, like The Psychotronic Video Guide and my collection of horror books. There was no Internet back then to learn about films. The reason I watched the film was because Tom Savini did the effects and it was a period when I wanted to see every film Savini had something to do with. Sadly the guy now has decided to be an actor rather than a special effects master. In fact even back then he appeared in many of the films he worked on, such as George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Martin. Savini’s make up work on this feature are some of his goriest to be sure. One classic scene is almost universally reviled by critics and it features Savini himself getting his head blown off by a point blank range shot gun blast. It still looks horrible three decades later.

Now the real problem with this movie is not Savini’s graphic make-up effects or the over top performance by star and co-writer Joe Spinell. Both Savini and Spinell are great, as is Carolyn Munro as Anne who is pursued by Spinell’s psychotic Zito but it is with Lustig’s often shoddy direction and the overly bleak story by Spinell and C.A. Rosenberg. Of course I still recommend the film. All films here at The Uranium Café are recommended and films I like. But there is some reason I did not want to sit through it yet one time to do a better review. And yet it must say something about me that I have seen the film three or four times already. I just am not in the mood for the film’s despairing atmosphere right now is all. The same issue with the German film Necromantik. I have been wanting to rewatch it for a review but do not want to put myself through the experience right now. And I may be too harsh on Lustig’s direction since the film had a very low budget of about $350,000 and was shot, like The Last Horror Movie, guerrilla style (meaning usually with out filming permits fro locations). But some of the editing and production gaffaws are simply creative negligence. There is one scene near the beginning of the film where Zito picks up a hooker on the street and rents out a hotel room. After minimal foreplay Zito is on top of the gal strangling her to death. Seems simple enough and yet as the scene switched between shots of Zito’s maniacal face and the struggling hooker it is clear that there are two actresses being used in the close up shots. It is stuff like this that could be corrected or avoided with a little patience. And yet those glitches give the film some much needed campyness as the overall tone is unrelentingly grim and depressing.

The story is about a lonely and schzoid landlord named Zito who keeps a collection of mannequins in his apartment. He likes to adorn the mannequins with the scalps of real women and then have conversations with them in his bed. He has monologues  with his dead mother who was a cruel, over bearing prostitute. After a while Zito gets bored with his current bed partner and set off to find a new victim. Any film like this requires suspension of disbelief and acceptance of certain implausibility’s. But the relationship that develops between obviously sleazy Zito and photographer Anne is a little too much. Anne accidentally snaps a photo of Zito and while attempting to retrieve the picture, for whatever reason, Zito develops an appreciation for Anne’s work and soon he and Anne are dating and she actually seems attracted to the scum bag in some scenes. Now whether Zito is a twisted serial killer or not is beside the point. It is stretching things a little too much to think hot looking professional photographer Anne would waste much, if any, time on him or give a damn about any of his opinions on her work. The gore sequences are great if you like that sort of things and Spinell is over the top in a fun sort of way but the film lacks any of the wit or humor found in The Last Horror Movie and one wonders if Spinell is trying to deliver a film similar to Taxi Driver in which he a small role.

An interesting piece of trivia is that the song Maniac, used in the film Flash Dance, by Michael Sembello was inspired by the film. It was not, as some sites report, written specifically for the film. Nonetheless the score was disqualified for an Oscar award after it was discovered it was not written specifically for Flash Dance. In fact some lyrics were altered for the Flash Dance version. Here is an example of before and after Maniac lyrics:

Before:
He’s a maniac, maniac that’s for sure,
He will kill your cat and nail him to the door
After:
She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before

The movie was released without a rating and it is felt it would have received an X rating at the time of its release for its extreme violence. Spinell wanted to do a sequel to the film but died in 1989. It was certainly a film role only he could pull off. However that has stopped Lustig from sealiong a deal in 2009 to do a remake of the film. I just think one Maniac is enough and who in God’s name could ever weep over a mannequin wearing a bloody scalp the way Joe Spinell could?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 at 3:34 pm and is filed under American Horror, Camp and Cheese Classic, Exploitation, Music-MP3s, Psychos-Slashers . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.