Just the Ticket #179: The Last Horror Film

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster

You may be wondering why the title of this post is The Last Horror Film if the banner here is for a movie titled Fanatic, and the simple answer is that they're the same movie released in different territories (Fanatic was its U.S. release title, while The Last Horror Film was its festival premiere and international title). The complicated answer (and the reason I'm even reviewing it this month) is that it had a third title for its release in Germany.

I mentioned in my Mission Of Justice review how certain countries and distribution regions in the 80s and 90s would capitalize on star power and plot similarities by releasing a completely unrelated movie as a "sequel" to something popular or well-received.

Today's movie up for review in Maniac May is one of those. While it's most commonly known as Fanatic or The Last Horror Film, in Germany, it was released as Maniac II: Love To Kill, with box art reminiscent of the original Maniac cover.

Now, I've already mentioned how William Lustig had no desire to direct a sequel, and how the film's star, Joe Spinell, pushed for the making of the Mr. Robbie short, but he died in a tragic shower accident before funding for a theatrical version could be secured. So obviously, despite starring both Spinell and Caroline Munro, The Last Horror Film is definitively not Maniac II.

Directed by David Winters (the Alice Cooper concert film, Welcome to My Nightmare, and choreographer for the Elvis film, Viva Las Vegas, the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, and the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special) and filmed on location at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival (where we see an advertisement for Still Of the Night—here titled Stab, giving me reason to think that Wes Craven was a fan of this movie—and hear then-timely references to the shootings of Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan, and assassin John Hinckley, Jr.'s obsession with Jodie Foster), The Last Horror Film is billed as a horror-comedy, hailed as a pioneer in meta-horror, and praised as the height of Spinell's acting prowess.

I...disagree, and I can tell you why.

I love the atmosphere, to start on a positive note, and I'm not talking about the incredibly...French nature of the beach scenes. I'm talking about the establishment of the movie's place and time through Winters' choreographer/documentarian eye. It reminded me a bit of how Werner Herzog handled Rescue Dawn.

I also liked the characters' name references (Munro plays horror actress Jana Bates—an obvious Psycho reference—and her husband at the time, Judd Hamilton, plays casting couch producer Alan Cunningham—perhaps referencing Last House On the Left and Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham) and suggestions of where else Wes Craven might have drawn inspiration from (in addition to the Stab poster and the horror reference names, Jana wins a festival award for her role in a fictional horror movie titled Scream).

I even liked the backyard charm of the dynamic between Spinell and his real-life mother playing a mother-son duo in a few scenes, and as repulsive as his character could be at times, there was a certain 80s over-the-top appeal to Spinell's delivery, like a broken Frank Zito turned to eleven and microwaved with a still-dripping fondue fork until the screen is splattered with flop sweat, shrapnel, and cheese sauce.

At least, I hope that's cheese sauce....

Here, Spinell plays Vinny Durand, a cab driver who's so obsessed with Jana Bates that he pulls a PeeWee Herman (literally, if you know what I mean) while watching her horror movies, does nipple play in one scene with her image projected over his chest, stage-dives on and almost sexually assaults a stripper who looks like her if you squint and let a six-foot-tall bouncer named Tiny punch you in the head a few times, and secretly films her like the creepy stalker that he is.

Yeah, Vinny is not the kind of guy who would last very long in the modern world without getting canceled and/or publicly fed into a woodchipper, and he decides he's going to Cannes to stalk and ambush Jana Bates so he can convince her to be in his cinematic horror masterpiece, The Loves Of Dracula (or, as the case ends up being, drug her with chloroform and film himself staking her unconscious body in a coffin while he's dressed up as Party City Dracula).

No sooner does Vinny arrive in Paris than a killer with a video camera begins delivering threatening notes to Jana's ex-husband, producer, and director (in handwriting very similar to Vinny's) before killing them off in cheesily gruesome ways.

Note that I said cheesy, not funny, because aside from the effects on the kills and Spinell hamming it up as Vinny and the personification of the defeatist dialogue in his head (suggesting that Vinny may have a disassociative disorder), The Last Horror Film plays things disappointingly straight for a purported horror-comedy.

Even the portrayal of the industry-type characters as overdramatic starlets and possessive, promiscuous tycoons is less about winking knowingly at the camera than it is about stating things as a matter of course and making the murder victims in a horror movie as unlikable as the cast and crew are comfortable with. So not only does the movie barely hold a lens up to reality, it does so while peeking from behind a heavy curtain in a crowded room so that no one will notice or care.

Despite not being revealed until the finale, the "mystery" of who the killer is quickly becomes so obvious that even though I desperately wanted The Last Horror Film to make me laugh at something..., anything, I wanted it just as badly to get to the point already.

And when it does, it makes no sense. Remember that whole, "Vinny's other personality drugs, kidnaps, and murders Jana while dressed like Dracula" thing? Well, it turns out that was all special effects and Jana's okay actually, and the real killer shows up to end them both, but Vinny has a chainsaw now, so off with the killer's head and the credits roll with Vinny having an emotional breakdown as the police arrive.

Except, nope.

It turns out this whole movie was just Vinny showing his horror movie ("the last horror movie I'll ever make") to his mother. So...was that the joke? Was that the meta angle? The Last Horror Film didn't make me laugh and it didn't say anything important in a language that I could understand. And worst of all, it committed the sin of making me spend an hour and a half of my life on an inception of pointlessness and unfulfilled expectations, like the time I had a craving for Rocky Road, but instead I woke up from a ninety minute dream about walking to the store in a blizzard for an empty carton of piss-flavored ice cream.

F+

Except, nope; I never actually had such a dream. I did, however, have a dream once that I woke up in the trailer of a moving eighteen-wheeler and ended up fighting zombies with Catherine Zeta-Jones, which is a far better dream to have.

Next week, I get to hope that I won't have to watch the same movie twice as I cover the 2012 Maniac remake.

So pardon my French, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I Cannes get by (you're welcome and I'm sorry), and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,
Out.