Fade to Black

This is a favorite movie of mine. I rushed out and got it on video when I heard it had been released. A lot of people here have given impressions of the story, I won't add to their great comments. What I would like to say is this this movie is a tremendous tribute to Hollywood Classic Movies. You will see snippets of many films here, all will be readily recognized. You will see Dennis Christopher's character slip deep into psychosis and take on the personas (and look..) of many of these characters in order to wreak his revenge. The more you know about old movies, the more you will get out of this film. Yes, it's essentially a slasher movie but this goes beyond the genre to get deep into the head of a killer. I like to think of this movie as a movie-fans version of "Sunset Boulevard", showing a broken mind on the other side of the fence. Worth seeing.

If you like the classics, bogart,monroe, brandon etc and also appreciate obscure horror like fulci, damato, ndeodato, chances are that you will fin this movie ubercool! i certainly did.

A movie-obsessed nerd has enough of people not taking his cinematic ambitions seriously, so he kills them in disguises inspired by his favorite movie characters.

As many good things as Fade To Black has going for it, the finished product is unsatisfying in a variety of ways. It's torn between tortured character study and also trying to keep up with the culture's current obsession with slasher movies and doesn't commit to either fully enough to satisfy and it's neither as thrilling or psychologically complex as it could be. Dennis Christopher's performance holds it together even when it comes close to crumbling down.

Dennis Christopher stars as a young film buff with no sense of a real family, no friends, and an obsessive need to live through film vicariously. He soon begins to act out the violence he sees on the big screen, and people close to him soon die. Although the premise for the film is original and innovative, the film does have some budgetary constraints and suffers from a weak overall plot. Notwithstanding the pedestrian direction and amateurish performances in general, the film does have a likable quality to it and does pay tribute to some great films while Christopher turns himself into various characters. Christopher does a rather good job in his demanding role, a role that really needs more flesh to it. The rest of the cast is rather blah with Tim Thomerson really giving an excrutiatingly bad performance as a psychologist working with the cops. Linda Kerridge stands out for her beauty if nothing else as an Australian Marilyn Monroe look-a-like. Christopher stands into such roles as Richard Widmark's killer in Kiss of Death, Dracula, the Mummy( a very poorly shot and conceived bit), Hoppalong Cassidy and Laurence Olivier in The Prince and the Showgirl. For those of you with a good background in film, the movie takes on a different level of meaning and is fun as a homage piece.

Dennis Christopher elevates what might as well be another generic slasher/thriller every step of the way with his thoughtful and committed performance as a movie obsessed loner who develops an obsession with a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and begins killing people he doesn't like while dressed as his famous cinematic heroes.

There's something a little too somber and serious about Fade To Black and if it could just let loose and have a little fun every now and then, it might have been a more enjoyable film. It plays more like Taxi Driver or the more recent Joker film, taking itself deathly seriously even when it should be adding a little levity to the story. It's admirable for the first half of the film, but once the killings start, it stops being that serious psychological study and turns into something entirely and logic flies out the window a bit.

There's also an entirely unnecessary subplot involving a police officer and the new, cocaine snorting psychologist she works with that adds very little except padding to the run time.

It's only Christopher's performance that holds the film together and it's worth seeing just for him.