Entertaining slasher set at the Cannes Film Festival
A taxi-driver in the Big Apple is also a wannabe film director (Joe Spinell) who travels to the French Riviera to make connections at the famous film festival, particular with the starlet he wants to perform in his movies (Caroline Munro). People start mysterious dying.
"The last Horror Film," aka “Fanatic” (1982), is a fun, but curiously obscure American slasher that only cost $2 million, yet that’s more than enough to make a quality slasher seeing as how “Halloween” cost just $325,000 four years earlier (the bulk of the budget was spent on expensive location shooting and permits).
Caroline was 32 during shooting and attractive, but she was already beyond her physical prime, which can be observed in “The Spy Who Loved Me” five years prior. She has hair highlights throughout that detract from her beauty. However, there are peripheral beauties, which is to be expected given the setting.
Despite the gory kills, this is not a scary slasher, such as the first “Friday the 13th.” There’s a wink of amusement to the proceedings, like it’s all a joke. But it can be enjoyed if you roll with it; it’s just not meant to be taken too seriously.
The movie runs 1 hour, 27 minutes, and was shot New York City (opening scenes) and France (Cannes, Pont de la Vierge Noire and Château de Pelly), as well as Los Angeles (strip club) and Lake Geneva, Switzerland (castle sequence).
GRADE: B-/C+
