{"id":2713,"date":"2024-08-24T14:44:19","date_gmt":"2024-08-24T14:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2713"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:54:34","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:54:34","slug":"fade-to-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/24\/fade-to-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Fade to Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Fade to Black <\/strong>(1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American Cinema\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, brief nudity and sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Vernon Zimmerman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Vernon Zimmerman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Craig Safan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alex Phillips Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 17, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dennis Christopher, Tim Thomerson, Normann Burton, Morgan Paull, Gwynne Gilford, Eve Brent Ashe, James Luisi, Linda Kerridge, John Steadman, Marcie Barkin, Mickey Rourke, Peter Horton, Hennen Chambers, Melinda Fee, Anita Converse, Mews Small.\u00a0 \u00a0 Box Office: $2.8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s easy for me to sympathize with Eric Binford, the lonely social outcast at the center of the psychological thriller Fade to Black<\/strong>. He\u2019s an intriguing character. A bona fide cinephile, he\u2019s the complete embodiment of alienation. He has no friends. Everybody thinks he\u2019s weird. All his life, he\u2019s been abused, bullied and made fun of by everybody around him- his boss, co-workers and the aunt that raised him since birth. He spends all his spare time watching old movies in his bedroom, a sanctuary that resembles a movie memorabilia museum. For him, reel life is preferable to real life. He often recedes into a world made up of characters and scenes from old movies. As strange and unsettling as it sounds, I totally get Eric. Never mind that he also happens to be a psychopathic killer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away), in the performance of his career, plays Eric. Some would call him a loser. His life is all about movies. It\u2019s easy to understand why; everything else in it sucks. He still lives with Aunt Stella (Ashe, Going Berserk), a mean, shrewish old lady in a wheelchair who constantly berates him. He works at a film distribution warehouse for a boss (Burton, Diamonds Are Forever) who\u2019s always on his case about his latest screw-up. One of his co-workers, Richie (Rourke, Angel Heart), gets his kicks from giving Eric a hard time. He just can\u2019t catch a break.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Then Eric meets a model (Kerridge, Surf II) who looks just like Marilyn Monroe, his favorite movie goddess. In fact, her name is Marilyn. She accepts his invitation for a date, but accidentally stands him up. It\u2019s all he can take. He experiences a complete psychotic break that begins with him killing Aunt Stella in a scenario right out of Kiss of Death- i.e. the infamous wheelchair down the stairs scene. After that, he starts going after his oppressors dressed as famous movie characters- e.g. Dracula, Hopalong Cassidy, the Mummy and Cody Jarrett, the character played by James Cagney in White Heat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In a subplot, criminal psychologist Dr. Moriarty (Thomerson, Trancers) tries to establish a pattern to the killings only to meet resistance from a closed-minded police captain (Luisi, Murphy\u2019s Law) who has no time for the doctor\u2019s hippy mumbo-jumbo. Unfortunately, this part of Fade to Black <\/strong>is a weak link. It\u2019s not as well-developed as it should be. Also, it\u2019s the source of a big narrative gap. The story goes right from the cops not knowing who the killer is to them searching Eric\u2019s house. There\u2019s no explanation as to how they figured it out. It\u2019s possible somebody at the scene of the final murder gave the police a description of the man dressed as a 40s gangster, but even that\u2019s a little shaky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0When Fade to Black<\/strong> focuses on Eric, it\u2019s great. This is mainly due to Christopher\u2019s bold, brilliant performance. What\u2019s most sad about it is that it\u2019s gone largely unnoticed by too many people. The movie was a commercial failure. Critics weren\u2019t exactly bowled over by it either. Roger Ebert gave it a positive review citing Christopher\u2019s performance and the humanizing of minor characters like Marilyn. She\u2019s not just some dumb blonde bombshell that dumps on Eric for no reason. She seems genuinely sorry she forgot their date. HOWEVER, herein lies another one of the movie\u2019s story problems. At the end, when Eric lures her to a photography studio to reenact The Prince and the Showgirl, she doesn\u2019t appear to recognize him. Or maybe she does, I\u2019m not sure. I wish this had been made clearer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Writer-director Vernon Zimmerman (Unholy Rollers) endows Fade to Black <\/strong>with neat stylistic touches like the deft blending of reality and fantasy in scenes where Eric gets his revenge on his tormentors. The one that stands out the most for me is when he confronts his bullying co-worker dressed as cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. Look at how it\u2019s staged and lit like a movie. Notice how the backlighting singles out Eric as the hero. This is clearly what his fantasy looks like in his mind. I don\u2019t even mind when the story gets out of control with bits like Eric driving a vintage gangster car to a barbershop to rub out a famous producer (Paull, Blade Runner) who stole his story idea. Dressed in a 40s gangster suit, he plugs him full of holes with a tommy gun. Where did he get these things and how could he afford them? On second thought, who cares? For a movie buff like me, it\u2019s fun to watch the creative ways Eric comes up to kill his enemies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As you can tell, I enjoyed Fade to Black <\/strong>very much. It\u2019s legitimately suspenseful and at times, darkly funny. I LOVE the premise! It\u2019s a clever idea made believable by Christopher\u2019s incredible performance. He\u2019s not the usual horror movie slasher. He\u2019s a sad young man, an awkward social outcast with a head full of movie trivia. We\u2019re made to understand why he\u2019s the way he is. We even sympathize with him. At the end, when he\u2019s standing on the roof of Mann\u2019s Chinese Theater mimicking Cody Jarrett\u2019s death scene before a crowd of onlookers and police, you can\u2019t help but feel it\u2019s a fitting end to a character that lives vicariously through the movies. If not for the underdeveloped police investigation, Fade to Black<\/strong> would be perfect. As it stands, it\u2019s a good movie.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fade to Black (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American Cinema\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 102 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, brief nudity and sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Vernon Zimmerman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Vernon Zimmerman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Craig Safan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alex Phillips Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 17, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dennis Christopher, Tim Thomerson, Normann Burton, Morgan Paull, Gwynne Gilford, Eve Brent Ashe, James Luisi, Linda Kerridge, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hidden-treasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Fade-to-Black-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2713"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3667,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2713\/revisions\/3667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}