The Last Horror Film
 
Every so often, a picture comes out that pales in comparison to its back story.  As is almost always the case when this occurs, the final product is a muddled mess, a victim of a troubled production and its own lavish excesses.  So it was with Elizabeth Taylor’s bloated epic Cleopatra, with Taylor’s “illness” and love affair with Richard Burton, a total of three directors, and its absurd budget, (when adjusted for today, it would have cost $297 million).  And so it is with Joe Spinell’s The Last Horror Film, one part slasher flick and one part vacation to Cannes for Spinell and company, no part great movie.
 
It begins with Spinell’s New York cabbie Vinny Durand watching a horror movie.  obsessed with horror and scream queen Jana Bates, he’s convinced she’s going to star in his magnum opus.  So he travels to the Cannes Film Festival (where she’s being voted Best Actress over the likes of Meryl Streep and Faye Dunaway, no less) to try and get her to sign on with the film.  Upon his arrival, those around Bates start to get killed.  Because the film portrays Durand as an unbalanced stalker, it makes every attempt to sway its audience to believe that he’s the killer.  But is he? 
 
More importantly, will you care?  Sadly, the odds are you won’t.  The problem is, sympathizing with Durand is nearly impossible.  Spinell portrays him as a pathetic, desperate dreamer who’s taken his obsessions to an unhealthy end.  Whether he’s responsible for the killings, he’s got delusions of grandeur that make him dangerous;  several times, the film compares him to Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley Jr., two men who lost the ability to draw the line between fiction and reality, and killed John Lennon and attempted to kill President Reagan, respectively.  The film seems to want to excuse Durand by showing how violence is everywhere, but I don’t buy it.  It’s even harder to sympathize with Jana Bates, because Caroline Munroe’s performance is extremely limited.  When a horror movie can’t generate audience sympathy for an innocent victim, it’s failed.
 
And then there’s the other film here, a travelogue of Spinell’s vacation in Cannes.  Many of the festival’s excesses, from the lavish parties to naked beauties on the beach to the five star hotels, are on parade across the movie.  In his commentary, Spinell’s best friend Luke Walters discusses how the production ran several million dollars over budget, and the staff had to sneak out of the Ritz Carlton in the middle of the night.  Clearly, Spinell and the production team were more concerned with partying than the film, and it shows.  Many of the film’s scenes were improvised, such as when Durand crosses an elevated hotel sign, and when he chases a near naked Bates through a hotel lobby.  As a result of the loose production, Last Horror Film is a sloppy effort that could have benefitted had its makers tightened it up and reeled in its star.
 
It’s hard not to compare the Last Horror Film to Spinell’s more popular grindhouse effort, Maniac.  Judd Hamilton, the film’s writer and Munroe’s husband at the time, certainly intended this, as here he reteamed Spinell and his wife in an effort to capitalize on the earlier film.  As anybody who read my review of Maniac will already know, that film is powerful and effective, because it wallows in its grime.  But Frank Zito is a much more layered character than Durand, and tonally Maniac is a much darker film.  Had Spinell taken both Durand and Last Horror Film into that territory, perhaps it would have been more successful.  As it is, it pales in comparison, as does Spinell’s performance.
 
Our unhinged friends at Troma have re-released The Last Horror Film as part of the Tromasterpiece collection.  Actually, they released the film once before under its other title, The Fanatic, without any extras, but this time Troma wasn’t shy with them.  First there’s Walters’ aforementioned commentary, which is more interesting when he discusses the film’s back story than the film itself.  He’s also involved with what’s billed as a half hour interview, though it runs several minutes short.  The highlight of this, sadly, is when a man who runs the local diner where Spinell used to go has no memory of him.  Even more morose is the piece’s end, where Walters cannot find Spinell’s grave.  A short interview with Maniac’s director William Lustig is even more depressing, as he talks disparagingly of Last Horror Film’s production.  There’s also the first 10 minutes of Mr. Robbie, a proposed sequel to Maniac.  It’s slapped together roughly, and gives just a taste of what the finished film could’ve provided.  Clearly, it’s no Maniac.  A number of trailers for Last Horror Film under both titles round out the package.  There are also some Tromatic extras, a bunch of trailers for recent releases from Troma.  Conspicuous by its absence is the Radiation March;  this is a great letdown (Watch any other Troma disc and it’s there).  And if you watch the movie without the introduction from Lloyd Kaufman, Troma’s co-founder and creator of the Toxic Avenger, you are committing a crime.
 
Be forewarned:  Troma put The Last Horror Film together from some inferior film elements, so the picture is a mess in spots.  But it’s the best they could do.
 
Clearly, however, this film is not the best that Spinell could have done.  Had he and the producers been more intent on making a coherent film than taking an all-expenses-paid vacation to Cannes, it would be more the topic of conversation than the drama behind the scenes.  No one in his right mind would ever put Spinell in the same league as Liz Taylor, but they were equally capable of creating a bloated mess.
 
--Phil Fasso