How sad is this?

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A movie about a socially awkward, totally obsessed film fan whose love of old films borders on the obsessive, with nights filled with movie after movie after movie? This one hits a little too close to home.Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher, Breaking Away) works in a Los Angeles film distributor warehouse by day and watches movies by night. He' the guy I was referring to earlier - someone so into movies he gets bullied by his family and co-workers. And when he meets Marilyn O'Connor, who looks like Marilyn Monroe, he finally finds someone whose looks are similar to the movie ideal that life does not always achieve. Or maybe he's just so crazy that when he sees her, he goes into a fantasy fugue state and only sees what his brain will allow him to see.Somehow, Eric is able to ask her out, but she stands him up by accident. This makes him go completely out of his mind, transforming himself into various film icons to destroy his enemies.First, he re-enacts Kiss of Death by pushing his Aunt Stella (who is really his mother) down the steps, showing up to her funeral as Tommy Udo, the role Richard Widmark played in the film. No one gets it. No one has seen the movies that Eric loves. There is no one to discuss them with. They can't even put her grave next to Marilyn Monroe's grave in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetary.Eric then becomes Count Dracula, attending a midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead. Eric then goes to Marilyn's house in a scene that's taken from Psycho. She screams, he drops his pen into the water and the ink becomes the blood. "I only wanted your autograph," he yells as he runs.Eric then goes back to find a hooker who had been rude to him. He chases her, she falls and dies, then he drinks her blood. Obviously, Eric has not seen Martin. Actually, the way this scene is intercut with scenes from old black and white horror films, I am certain that the makers of this film have seen Romero's vampire film.Now that Eric has gone this far, why not dress up as Hopalong Cassidy and kills off Richie(Mickey Rourke in an early role), a co-worker who bullies him. Oh yeah - Tim Thomerson is a criminal psychologist who is working with a policewoman (they're having sex, because 1980 and all) to find what he believes is a serial killer. The big problem is that his captain wants all the glory for himself.Eric talks to his aunt as if she were still alive, then after watching Halloween (producer Irwin Yablans also produced that film), he pleasures himself to a photo of Marilyn Monroe.Eric's dream has been to own his own movie theater and to make his own movie. He tells a sleazeball named Gary Bially his idea, Alabama and the Forty Thieves and you get the feeling not much good can come of it.Eric's boss fires him and won't allow him back into work to get his posters. As his everyday self, even when trying to talk like a movie character, Eric is impotent. But when he's dressed as The Mummy, he can frighten his boss into a heart attack.After seeing Gary Bially on a talk show, talking up the movie Eric created as his own, Eric shows up to the produer's brithday party. Dressed as James Cagney's character from White Heat, he fires a submachine gun at everyone in the room before killing the man who stole from him.The cops are on to Eric, but he's hired Marilyn for a photo shoot and is all set to re-enact The Prince and the Showgirl when Thomerson's character arrives. Eric runs to Mann's Chinese Theater and makes it to the roof before dying just like Cagney in White Heat, yelling, "Made it, ma! Top of the world!"Writer and director Vernon Zimmerman also created Unholy Rollers, but this movie is way beyond that. It shows how only seeing the world as the movies can be a danger to yourself and everyone else. Eric goes from shy and withdraw to dark and mean by the end of the movie, as he slowly becomes a new character. I wonder what he would have thought about the movie that they made his life into?

Eric is a really nice guy, but his mind isn't in the pressures of reality. He spends nearly all his time thinking of, and watching, old movies (Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy, Night of the Living Dead, etc.) using an old-fashioned projector in his dim bedroom. His aunt Stella has taken him in but is confined to a wheelchair and blames him for it.One day he meets a Marilyn Monroe lookalike at the local city diner, and when she accidentally stands him up for a movie date he sadly walks home to watch his movies alone, only to have his aunt destroy his beloved projector. Horrified, he snaps and shoves her down the stairs, and soon afterwards goes on a murder rampage to get back at everyone who dragged him down in life.Fade to Black is an action-packed and hilarious yet underrated slasher film. It deserves more of an audience, that's for sure. With its catchy 80's soundtrack, decent acting and original plot, if you're a slasher fan or even if you just want a movie to watch this is one to add to your list! It does have one or two flaws: it starts of rather boring and many of the inside jokes Eric tells reference films that most people haven't actually watched so it's hard to get what he finds so funny. Overall though, it isn't bad.

'Fade to Black' may not be one of cinema's greatest films, but it is a minor masterpiece of sorts. cinema great does'nt quite hit it, but it does have the feel of a masterwork. and it is definitely some kind of epiphany and homage to cinema that reaches a strange plateau that is hard for any film to surpass or emulate.while referencing so many cinema classics from the Golden Age, and many horror films, it creates an all new cinema monster. this time the monster is the cinema fan himself. the viewer and film buff. it's about a guy who thinks, lives and breathes cinema. and combined with a disillusionment with life, it turns him into a ghoulish horror.this whole thing is sort of a 'Walter Mitty' story gone terribly wrong. it's about how our fantasies both make us, control us, and can often break us. it's this guy's fantasies that make him inspired and unique. they are also his coping mechanism to deal with a hum drum frustrating world. but when his world begins to go terribly wrong, the coping mechanism goes into overdrive and drives him into delusion and murder. you could write a text on this stuff. it's brilliant.the acting is just great by Dennis Christopher as the obsessed cinema fan turned homicidal mutant. there is also a hilarious bit role played by a fledgling Mickey Rourke as one of Christopher's unfortunate victims. and an intense performance by Eve Brent Ashe as Christopher's wheelchair bound aunt/mother. but possibly the real stunner here could be Linda kerridge, an uncanny Marilyn Monroe look alike. her performance is both haunting and truly memorable. and she looks so much like the real Marilyn M. at times, that you have to take a double take. she is especially good in the final scenes where Christopher acts out 'The Prince and the Showgirl' while feeding her Quaaludes(hey boomers, remember ludes?)and pumping her with alcohol, ending in an exciting escape to the top of the Chinese theater in Hollywood with a strange 'King Kong' type ending. crazy.Vernon Zimmerman's outstanding direction also recalls the 'B' flicks of Roger Corman and Robert Aldrich.all in all, this is an amazing and memorable cinema experience guaranteed to haunt any true cinema buff for life. if you are a real fan of cinema, and classic Hollywood, and don't mind being "punked" a little, this film is for you.

What was this movie even trying to do really? Is it some kind of variation on slasher movies, or is it just your everyday "dude masturbating to Marilyn Monroe photographs"-flick? Whatever it is, it's not good. There are just so many bothersome little things in this movie that do not work out. The writing feels like nobody put any thought in it, it's just so unstructured and clumsy. Just take the thing de resistance of this movie: the action scene. The highlight of this scene is apparently a car running into a bunch of cans, but what were these cans doing in the middle of the street? Is ad space so expensive in this town. Also, you have the protagonist's aunt. No, his mother. No, his aunt. This mystery would without a doubt be absolutely fascinating if it had any bearing to the plot whatsoever. Then you have the killer's disguises, which start out okay but eventually just come down to wearing a hat. Wow, a hat. Who is this guy, never seen him before. Things like that just really bring the mood down, it gives the film a very amateur feel. Dennis Christopher is great in this, every other aspect blows goats.