and
The Appropriate Tune - "Fade To Black", by Metallica
Fun fact, I had never actually heard of this movie until a few days before writing this review. I’ve taken up drawing as a hobby, and I was looking around the free streaming services for movie posters to draw, and I stumbled upon this movie here. The poster looked cool, so I decided to watch the movie as well. No reviews, no rotten tomato score, just based purely on the poster, just as god intended.
Fade To Black stars Dennis Christopher as Eric Binford, the worst, most degenerate kind of person you could imagine: A movie fan. Eric leads a life of quiet desperation in Hollywood, harangued by his invalid aunt, bullied at his deadend job at an advertising firm, until one day he happens to meet aspiring model Marilyn O’Connor (Linda Kerridge), who is the spitting image of Eric’s favorite actress, Marilyn Munroe. Despite the odds Eric actually manages to score a date on that first meeting, but little does he or anyone else know that this will be the catalyst for Eric’s spiral into insanity and murder. Also Tim Thomerson is in this movie, which is cool.
You remember that movie High Fidelity? It was pretty popular among some of my friends at the college radio station, because it took place in a record shop and the characters namedropped bands that a specific breed of music nerds were familiar with, the exact kind of nerds my friends were at the time. That’s kind of what Fade To Black is, but if instead of John Cusack complaining about his love life he was a cosplaying serial killer instead. Just about every scene in this film features some kind of reference to a movie; there’ll be posters on the walls, characters will drop names or say lines, sometimes they’ll just insert clips of other films into this one. Even Scream seems tame in its cinematic obsessions when compared to Fade To Black. I mean Matthew Lillard didn’t pretend he was James Cagney for half of his movie.
That’s the crux of what would make this film a cult classic, I suppose. If you are a movie buff, particularly older films, then there’s an extra level of enjoyment to get out of this compared to non-buff viewers. If there’s a scene where dresses up as Dracula and quotes Bela Lugosi (despite the clips used being the Christopher Lee Dracula), does it mean more if you’ve seen the ‘31 film? When Eric falls into delusions of being James Cagney, does it matter if the audience knows who James Cagney was or the type of characters he plays? Is there even a movie without these references? Is the only reason this movie stands out in a sea of slashers is this association with film history? I don’t know, maybe. Kinda seems like it.
I got most of the references, so I guess I’ll recommend it. It takes a while to shift into gear though, and Tim Thomerson’s character feels like both a jab at social workers and an afterthought with how irrelevant his role is, but otherwise it’s an okay quirky little horror movie. And no naked breasts either, if you’ve got issues with female nudity. You will have to see Dennis Christopher jack off instead, but hey, you can’t have everything.
STATUS: RECOMMENDED
