Fondu au noir

Dennis Christopher turns in the performance of his career as a movie obsessed loner who disguises himself as his favorite film characters to get revenge on those he believes have wronged him.

Fade to Black is somewhere between a classy psychological thriller and a slasher movie, but it refuses to lean into either or and ends up not being much of anything other than a missed opportunity. It's hard to imagine a bloodthirsty slasher fan getting much out of this and it's not quite smart and insightful enough to get any mainstream attention.

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.

The concept for Fade To Black could go many different directions, but the film wavers between serious character drama a la Joker, made for TV melodrama, and a cursory attempt at a slasher film. They never really mesh and the film feels too confused to make much of an impact in spite of a wonderful central performance by Dennis Christopher. Linda Kerrige also makes for a smashing Marilyn Monroe impersonator.

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.

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.