The Last Horror Film (1982) — Triskaidekafiles

THE LAST HORROR FILM

WRITER: Judd Hamilton, David Winters, Tom Klassen

DIRECTOR: David Winters

STARRING: Caroline Munro as Jana Bates

Joe Spinell as Vinny

Judd Hamilton as Alan Cunningham

Devin Goldenberg as Marty Bernstein

David Winters as Stanley Kline

Stanley Susanne Benton as Susan Archer

Glenn Jacobson as Brett Bates

QUICK CUT: The harrowing journey of a man trying to make his breakout film and secure funding and his star, at the legendary Cannes Film Festival.

THE MORGUE

Vinny - Your average New Yorker, with aspirations of being a filmmaker. He has an obsessive personality, focused heavily on an actress, but buried under the obsession is a nice guy who loves his mom.

Jana - Your average film actress. She’s made her name as a budding scream queen, and doesn’t have much patience for people who don’t have time for horror. She’s dedicated to her work, but not so much to her husband.

Brett - Your average Hollywood producer, he’s driven, he’s controlling, he knows what he wants, and he’ll get it. He’s married to Jana, but that relationship is falling apart.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! With this being my 13th anniversary month, I thought there would be no better time to take a look at the Last Horror Film. It's a bit of a spiritual successor to the original Maniac, one of the first movies I ever Trisked, in that it stars Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro, and has a bit of that same feel, with its alternate title being "Fanatic" and how obsession drives a man. So let's get to it!

The movie opens up with a woman getting naked, getting into a hot tub, and getting dead. BUT IT WAS ALL A MOVIE...as the credits roll. Yay, we're done qu...aww nuts, no.

We meet Vinny, and the premise of the actual movie is simple; Vinny is an aspiring filmmaker, obsessed with the actress Jana Bates, and he might have actually convinced himself she is starring in his next picture. It's really unclear how much he believes his own untruths.

I’m not sure how I feel about this new Batsignal.

But anyways, Vinny is going to make a movie, and he scrapes together everything he can, flies to Cannes for the film festival there, and he's going to secure Miss Bates in his movie, and possibly even a distribution deal.

Much of the first ten minutes is spent in New York City establishing Vinny's character, his obsession, and how much everyone thinks he's a joke. And I gotta say, while you think he's a bit creepy and weird, you almost wanna cheer him on, and see the underdog make good. At least…at this point in the movie.

And yeah, there are definite parallels here to Fade to Black as well, another anniversary movie, although Vinny is much more of an adult, with less of an arrested development feel I got from the other movie.

Once Vinny is in Cannes and settles in, we start getting news reports of the then-recent assassination attempt on President Reagan. It's an effective way to set the time period, the mood of the collective consciousness, as well as subtly drawing parallels between Hinkley and Vinny's own obsessions.

We spend a lot of time wandering around Cannes, but that's fair enough. It's not a familiar place to a lot of people, it helps capture the festival atmosphere, and we get to see it through Vinny's eyes, as he's ever present and filming a lot of it for his film.

Jana finally arrives, and like a lot of Hollywood stars, her life is complicated. She's married to her producer, but in love with someone else, and a divorce is in the works. You can feel the tension, no matter how much everyone tries to "It's fine" their way around.

Reality comes to slap Vinny in the face when he calls her produsband to try and get a meeting, or to show his script, but Brett Bates isn't gonna look at it without an agent.

So, Vinny has come a long way for nothing, and so he is going to head back to New York and live his life...ahaahaha, nope, he's staying right where he is and his obsession and delusions are determined to make it happen.

Jana gets some flowers with a card saying "You have made your last horror film" and goes to take a meeting with Brett, who also has received the same note with a bottle of champagne. Also, yay, title!

When she arrives, she finds the door to his rooms ajar, and also finds him with his neck ajar, in that his head has been removed from his body.

Jana rushes into the arms of her lover, and the police say there's no sign of Mister Bates, dead or alive, so the plot thickens.

Several other notes have gone around town, and an agent, Marty, takes his concerns to the police. But with no body, Brett's reputation as a prankster, and what with Hollywood promotions being what they are, the police are doing nothing.

Marty gets a note of his own, supposedly from Brett, asking him to meet him at a theatre so they can work out a deal. But the killer cuts Marty out of the deal. With an axe.

Someone did a real hatchet job on this film.

Jana does some press conferences, they talk a bit about horror's influence on people's behaviour, and it's some pretty good stuff, and sadly a drumbeat we still hear today.

Oh, she also mentions that the movie she's promoting is named Scream, which is weirdly fitting with the meta nature of this movie. Hah.

We get more of Cannes nightlife as Vinny's sexual frustrations drive him to attack a stripper. He follows that up with a screening of a brutal horror movie, that makes him leave the theatre. He runs into Stanley the director and yells about how vile it is, and it made him sick, and again, stuff we are still dealing with today!

Following that encounter, and what with all the violence, Stanley and his girlfriend make plans to get out of there, but not before a midnight tryst in a private spot.

Stanley and Susanley wander the town, and he makes her play a game of hide and seek in the dark. Unfortunately, when she finds him, he's already been killed, and she takes not only a bullet to the face, but falls off the tower she'd climbed up to find Stanley.

Vinny's feeling down after all his defeats, so he makes the bold move of sneaking into Jana Bates' room while she's taking a bath. Needless to say, that doesn't go well.

Jana naturally freaks out at this total greasy stranger crawling in through her window, and screeches at him to get out.

Vinny is ABSOLUTELY crushed as the object of his affections and obsessions completely rebukes him, and he loses it. He smashes the bottle of champagne and threatens her with the remains in his hand.

Fortunately, the intensity is broken when the doorbell rings with another delivery. Jana shoves Vinny out of the way, and takes off through the hotel and the streets of Cannes, wearing naught but her towel.

She eventually finds Alan, who brings her back to the hotel, so he can help her calm down. They make plans to take some time away at a friend's castle in the country to catch their breath. Unfortunately, Vinny overhears the plan, and none to subtly follows them there.

As night falls, Vinny lurks around, doing some more filming, and eventually he makes some noise which echos and calls the bodyguards to check things out.

In all the commotion, they accidentally shoot Jonathan and Vinny escapes into the night.

"He's gonna shoot!" "Well yeah, that's what cameras do..."

Back at the festival, Vinny writes his mom a letter, ready to make his final push, how he's making all his dreams come true and that, "my film will be my immortality". That is SUCH a good line, and a sentiment I can relate to.

With the big festival awards ceremony taking place, Alan and friends try to do the old switcheroo, with having someone who vaguely looks like Jana swap out at some point as a decoy. But somehow, Vinny finds and chloroforms the right one, dragging her off.

Unfortunately, he drops the letter to mom, in which he mentions the castle, so the final scene is set for Vinny to make his movie, and have everyone chase after him.

Oh, that might be funnier if I had mentioned that Vinny has been having these fantasies of making his movie, both involving himself, and his idealised director form. And despite being supposed fantasies, he also tears himself down a lot in them, culminating in fighting himself, however briefly.

While Vinny drives to the castle, he says that he's done this to protect her, and there's someone trying to kill her, and yeah dude! YOU!

But wait! Once they reach the castle, it is revealed that it's NOT Vinny, as they find waiting for them, a very much not dead Brett Bates. This was his plan all along, he was hurt by the affair, the threat of leaving him, so he wanted to get rid of his wife and Alan.

Vinny's arrival was a nice bit of happenstance that Brett played into now that he had ready made patsy, using the man's encounters to take care of everyone else Brett was annoyed with. I'm not sure how well this all plays together, but it's one heck of a twist, so I'll allow it.

It's actually a solid twist on a first time watch, as the movie very much keeps your focus on Vinny, but on a second viewing, when you know it's Brett, all the clues are a little TOO obvious. Still, very well done.

Vinny tosses his cape over Brett, and tells Jana to run...and she just stands there. Geeze, I thought she was supposed to be good at taking direction?? And before someone calls me out, yes, I know she had just been drugged and was recovering from the chloroforming.

Brett comes out trying to use Vinny's affection for Jana against him, because he can't be allowed to escape, and uh, suddenly there's a chainsaw which Vinny uses to remove Brett's head for real this time.

And so Vinnie finishes his movie, heads home to mom, and starts making plans for his next film, but don't worry, he's done with horror movies!

He takes his head, and with it, his directorial power.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks all right for a lower budget thing, put out in the early 80s, shot on the run, and put out by Troma. But as you can see, especially in that screencap riiight up there, the dark scenes are REALLY dark. And with so many deaths happening at night, it hurts.

Audio: It sounds pretty good, there’s some mumbling here and there, but that’s just how things were.

Sound Bite: "I've seen enough fake blood to know the real thing when I see it!"

Body Count: Not a bad amount here.

1 - About two minutes in and a girl gets electrocuted in a film

2 - Brett gets his throat slit

3 - The Killer axes Marty in the back.

4 - Stanley gets stabley

5 - And then the killer shoots Susanne in the back of the head and she fell to her death

6 - Jonathan gets accidentally killed by his bodyguards. Good job, guys.

7 - Vinny chainsaws Brett for reals this time.

Best Corpse: How do you not pick the person who gets shot in the head and still falls several stories in a great dummy fall?

Blood Type - C-: It tries, but again, so much in the night hurt the blood sightings. The head gag is good, there’s a random face burning in a movie within the movie that’s good, but for the most part, it’s light on what we can see.

Sex Appeal: There’s the occasional flashes of nudity. France!

Drink Up! Every time Vinny has a fantasy

Movie Review: This is pretty good. It has a LOT going on, with Vinny’s obsession, ties to the news reports of all the attacks by crazed fans going around the world at the time, the meta commentary on horror and fandom…and I gotta say it, Joe Spinell never gets enough credit. He chews scenery from time to time, but when he gets into it, my god is he amazing in this movie. Like I said, even when you think he could be the killer, he has this charm, even with his creepy behaviour and threatening, obsessive demeanor. The plot twist is good, and there’s just a lot about this film that works, while still feeling kinda cheap and sleazy like a lot of 80s movies. Four out of five calls home to ma.

Entertainment Value: The biggest flaw in this film is that it can be a bit slow at times. It does spend a lot of time on characters and locale, and maybe a few too many fantasies, but all that just paints a rich world, and gets in the head of Vinny. And there are layers to this movie. I love me a slasher that has its hidden depths to it that gives you a lot of stuff to mull over. And the over the top camp, and wild Cannes atmosphere are a treat to watch. Three out of five reels of film

And I know normally there's only three movies a month, but since this is my lucky 13th triskiversary, I have one last trick up my sleeve, so keep an eye out for my last horror movie review. Yes, that's right.