When a little movie called Maniac made its rounds across American theatres in 1981, it was greeted with notoriety, protest and a big fat profit, making about seventeen times its modest $350,000 budget. Not only the directorial debut of former porn filmmaker and later hero of digital horror distribution William Lustig, Maniac was the pet project of boisterous New York actor Joe Spinell, who helped produce and write the picture as well as star in a rare lead performance. Perhaps best known as either Willy Cicci or Tony Gazzo depending upon your reverence for either the first two Godfather or Rocky films, the scar-faced Spinell became a bona fide cult hero for playing Frank Zito, a disturbed loner who honors his abusive prostitute mother by stalking the streets of Manhattan and murdering women, taking their scalped hairs and stripped clothes home to festoon a collection of mannequins. Even Oscar would've likely barfed had the golden guy been propped up near a screen showing this film.

The movie co-starred Caroline Munro, a model-turned-actress from England who you may remember for being a Bond Girl (in The Spy Who Loved Me) or the video vixen in Adam Ant's clip for "Goody Two Shoes." Her earliest roles were in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Dracula A.D. 1972 and both Dr. Phibes films. Her husband at that time, Judd Hamilton, invested in the completion of Maniac and saw a healthy return, so much so that offers for Spinell and Munro to make another feature were on the table.

Their third and final pairing (the first was 1978's Star Crash) was THE LAST HORROR FILM, which did not go so swimmingly for the producer and credited co-writer. Despite a timely story concerning the dangers of celebrity and the crazed devotion of an unstable fan (the movie started filming a month after the John Hinckley incident) and the chance to shoot during the actual Cannes Film Festival of 1981, Hamilton saw his modest half-a-million budget rocket to about $2 million. It took over a year for the film to be completed and screened in numerous festivals, including Cannes in 1983, before making its U.S. video debut in 1984 courtesy of Media Home Entertainment after a virtually non-existent theatrical run.

The year is now 2009. My extensive review of Maniac is still of recent vintage and I am finally watching THE LAST HORROR FILM for the first time. I was at least aware of its existence as a youth (thank you, Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever) in the wake of my accidental discovery of that blue VHS box with the sick cover art and the classic tagline: "I warned you not to go out tonight." I never got around to picking it up on DVD under the alternate title of "Fanatic," although it was distributed by g**damn, motherf***ing Troma of all studios. Something in me must have anticipated this day, because Lloyd & Michael have given THE LAST HORROR FILM a deluxe reissue and have christened it entry number three in the Tromasterpiece Collection.

Vinny Durand (Spinell) works as a taxi driver in NYC, spending his free time pleasuring himself in grindhouses, fantasizing about becoming a prestigious director and looking after his mother in the apartment room they share (both the setting and the actress playing Ma Durand, Mary Spinell, were authentic parts of Joe's life at the time). Spurred on by the knowledge of famed horror actress Jana Bates (Munro) appearing at the Cannes Film Festival to promote her latest star vehicle, Scream, Vinny is on the next plane to France and immediately sets up quarters at a hotel, decorating his wall with an alarming shrine of Bates' photos. He intends to catch up with Jana in person and talk her into starring in some mystery movie, tailing her from the concord to the clubs with a film camera but encountering dead ends at every opportunity.

Unluckily for Jana, who's in the midst of a well-publicized romantic triangle involving producer Bret Bates (Glenn Jacobson) and director Alan Cunningham (Hamilton), Vinny does catch up with her after first Bret and then two other showbiz types are discovered dead after receiving ominous notes ("You've made your last horror film"). By this point, Vinny's obsessive, awkward and fevered mental state has made him more desperate than ever, and he's not ready to accept "No" for an answer.

That whole paragraph above would sum up the plot of THE LAST HORROR FILM, in which Frank Zito is reborn as a starf***ing stalker. If you recall Spinell's internalized portrayal of the titular maniac from 1980, you'd notice a character that was vicious, tormented, pitiful, and even, dare I say it, charismatic. Spinell could be distraught and greasy at one moment, chiseled yet urbane in the next. It felt like a chance to see a fine character actor display overlooked range. Vinny Durand can't help but feel like a rehash of some of Zito's defining traits, from his internal monologues to his stunted growth (in Maniac, he put out a cigarette on a doll; here, Spinell's character sets off a cymbal-playing monkey toy) to his sexually repressed, impotent angst. Whereas he killed a hooker over it before, the worst here is that Spinell's character rushes to French kiss an exotic dancer's bare chest.

But damned if Spinell can't make it work twice by sheer force of eccentric, manic will. More so than co-writer/director David Winters, the former Broadway star who also made the MST3k favorite Space Mutiny, it's Joe Spinell who gets across the volatile, dangerous nature of celebrity worship by inhabiting the schizophrenia of his gross, creepy antihero. In his mind, he's his own actor as the star of a work-in-progress film, "The Life of Vinny Durand," confronted by zombie-like versions of Jana Bates, mercilessly taunting spirits of the deceased showbiz players and even his own alter ego, dressed in full regalia and inquisitive about his meek doppelganger's failure.

In another memorably twisted moment, Vinny Durand makes mad self-love with projected images of Jana Bates in private as the actress herself defends her craft against an army of pressmen (including June Chadwick, who would go on to star in This Is Spinal Tap, and Robin Leach) who suggest horror films do create malcontents.

Spinell has to walk a fine line between unflinching depravity and humanistic understanding, just like before. On the one hand, it's understood that Vinny's infatuation and ambitions are skewed towards the dangerously fanatic, but there's a flicker of a misunderstood, principled soul that crops up from time to time. He begins the movie as just a workaday dreamer who is bent on proving his worth to his mother, albeit one with a rather sick fascination with the filmic image. Much of the film's suspense is in whether one can imagine Vinny being the unseen killer taking his obsession too far or just a hopelessly devoted nutcase whom you hope at least gets to talk about just exactly what the film he dreams of is.

There isn't much of a foundation worthy to carry Spinell's grandiose performance, which is to me the ultimate difference between THE LAST HORROR FILM and Maniac. Although Bill Lustig and David Winters supposedly share an understanding of the lurid murder mystery style from Italy that is the giallo, there's very little Winters does here that matches the unbearably tense and raw scare factor of Lustig's film. The protracted chase sequence involving a hack horror director, Stanley Kline (Winters himself), who teases his lover by sneaking into a bell tower, feels rushed but without the sense of kinetic energy and doom of the subway pursuit of Maniac. If you come looking for gore, you'll get it on occasion (and expertly done I might add), there is a pay-off to the kill scenes, but we're far from the horrifying set pieces of the Tom Savini-abetted earlier film.

THE LAST HORROR FILM dates itself by virtue of taking place in the decadent early 1980s (with a needlessly expositional soundtrack so heavy on tacky rock music that I forgot all about the pulsating, Vince Clarke-era Depeche Mode song which played over the opening credits). There is an alarming overuse of footage from the frontlines of Cannes that cannot wholly compensate for a very thin story. But the film festival scenery is not without its charm. What Spinell and his friend Luke Walter carried over from working on Maniac was using the camera as a kamikaze tool, sneaking out to capture scenes that would've gone undiscovered but offer satisfying images all their own. With the shooting in the actual French resort town and on the red carpet itself, we're treated to generous amounts of location establishment, with the requisite topless beaches, walk-ons by famous faces (Karen Black, Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Adjani), movie posters for a host of anticipated features (Excalibur, Mephisto, Possession, the latest from Jean-Luc Godard and John Waters), and a cheeky use of a cardboard recreation of the poster for the then-recent 007 feature For Your Eyes Only around a doorway.

Caroline Munro gets a more prominent role here than she did in Maniac, thankfully, but I was constantly distracted by her looped dialogue, coming from a voice that doesn't quite sound like her. But Jana Bates feels like a role that seems natural to her, and Munro is at least very beautiful and freaks out like a classic female foil. The screenplay doesn't develop Jana as much as Spinell invests in Vinny, but Munro was convincing. The face-to-face encounter between Vinny and Jana in her bathroom, wherein the fledgling auteur directs his star performer in the most cringe-worthy of circumstances, works like gangbusters for both Spinell and Munro. At the same time, I had a hard time believing that was Mary Spinell's real voice in her scenes with her actual son. It actually sounds like a man imitating an old lady's voice. It's interesting to see actual interplay between the two, however, even if the footage feels like an afterthought.

For all the social commentary sprinkled throughout (radio broadcasts about Pope John Paul II and John Hinckley, a People magazine issue with Jodie Foster on the cover), the insider aspect of movie distribution (watch for that airplane banner announcing that an infamously awful third entry in a popular film franchise is currently in production) and the gruelingly believable performance by the late Joe Spinell, the conclusion of THE LAST HORROR FILM sends it skyrocketing into heights of camp that at least certify the film as a more conventionally fun movie to watch as opposed to Maniac. By the time Al Jolson's "Mammy" lifts us out of the final scene and into the closing credit scrawl, there is a feeling that something bizarre has just happened. I never anticipated that this was something Troma would've released the moment I discovered this title in my filmic encyclopedia. And after watching the admittedly outrageous dénouement, it all made sense to me.

Troma's second go at releasing this film on DVD, this time as a full-fledged collector's edition, outshines their much inferior earlier edition, which circulated under the alternate title of "Fanatic." The studio have attempted to release an uncut edition of the movie, and although a preamble warns of inferior elements used for this composite cut, this is seemingly the best way to view this film. A few minutes of material has been added to the film, and you don't need to have seen the film prior to get all eagle-eyed about which moments have been restored.

When Vinny takes in the leeringly gory "Caller in the Night," a pension worker carves open a man's chest, rips out his heart and takes a bite out of it. A popcorn-gorging Vinny then proceeds to get sick and bolts from his seat. By noticing a certain fade in the image, you can tell where the edited version cut off. There's also a final kill scene with a chainsaw wherein you can't make out most of the splatter.

I remember clips of this film used in the Spinell documentary from the Maniac DVD, and they looked considerably better than the picture quality on this disc, whose closest thing to a reference quality would appear to be the old Media Home Entertainment VHS release. The image looks considerably murky on several occasions, especially in a few dark shots wherein black crush obscures some details. I also noticed video defects, flaring frames and noise amidst the consistent grain and print defects. The film does sport properly-saturated colors that suit the era in documentary fashion even if they aren't as fine-tuned as a proper restoration could afford.

The soundtrack is in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, and it too sounds just as I would imagine hearing it should I have viewed it on home video back in 1984. The dialogue is understandable and despite a jump in the Depeche Mode song at the start, the rest of the original song score is clear to the point of unbearable.

Per usual, Lloyd Kaufman delivers a giddy introduction to the film wherein he forgets the exact year the film was released and sings a few bars of "When You're a Jet" in honor of David Winters, an alum of both stage and screen versions of West Side Story. Evan Husney of the Troma video department moderates a commentary track featuring Luke Walter, Spinell's personal assistant and longtime friend. Walter helped Spinell steal some shots and is credited as both associate producer and actor (as one of Jana's bodyguards).

Walter's track is heavy on stories of him and Spinell hobnobbing in Europe, encountering rich Arabs and wrecking hotel rooms in frustration. The impression I'm left with after watching the extras for Maniac and "Fanatic" is that Joe Spinell was a larger-than-life presence as well as a particularly inventive, confident actor. Walter is particularly sincere about the cult following Joe developed in 19 years, and there is great fun poked at the performer as well as fun anecdotes from the production.

Regrettably, it could've helped if there was another participant on board or if Husney did more research (a la Eli Roth's entertaining discussion of Bloodsucking Freaks) to get some real conversation about the decadence of the whole enterprise. If you're looking for a concrete idea of the film's admittedly turbulent production, "fuhgeddaboutit!"

Walter revisits some of his and Joe's old stomping grounds in the 24-minute video featurette "My Best Maniac," wherein he recycles some of the stories from the commentary, swings by the apartment where Joe used to live and spends the bulk of his time discussing Joe inside of a Queens diner. The most notable story not accounted for in the commentary includes a chance encounter with Stevie Wonder that came around a time of friction between the two friends. Walter also remembers the day he got the call about Joe's death and makes a stop at the cemetery to pay his respects, at which point the program gracefully ends.

An insightful yet criminally brief (at 3:39) interview with William Lustig finds the director of Maniac recalling the genesis of the film around the time he was prepping Vigilante, in which Joe had a starring role. Lustig points out how the actor's personality was made an essence in the film's production and distances himself from the production by viewing it as "kind of an insane project." Sadly, neither Judd Hamilton nor David Winters are on hand to support or refute these claims. Caroline Munro is absent, but she does discuss the film briefly in "The Joe Spinell Story" on the special edition DVD of Maniac.

The best supplement on the new THE LAST HORROR FILM disc was one which, oddly enough, didn't appear on the aforementioned Maniac release. It's the promo reel for the aborted Maniac sequel, also known as "Mr. Robbie," directed by Buddy Giovinazzo (whose own indie feature Combat Shock is getting the Tromasterpiece treatment this summer). In it, the titular character, a children's entertainer, delivers retribution upon reading fan mail from a youngster with an abusive father. Filmed in 1986, it didn't start getting support for a feature-length production until it was too late, as the increasingly ill Spinell bled to death in his apartment on January 13, 1989.

I had only seen it before on a Collector's Edition VHS of Maniac, which I still proudly own, but it was missing some footage of his character in a bar and doing cocaine with a cook. The full 10-minute short is presented here, one of Spinell's last appearances on film despite bit parts in subsequent movies like The Pick-Up Artist and Married to the Mob.

A trailer for THE LAST HORROR FILM as well as a trio of rare TV spots for the film under the "Fanatic" moniker are also included, as are about 20 photographic stills courtesy of Luke Walter featuring Spinell and friends.

Although it can never hope to match the reputation and grimy near-excellence of Maniac, the schlock-and-awe spectacle that is THE LAST HORROR FILM once again gives the multi-faceted, badly-missed Joe Spinell the chance to not only receive a starring role, but to command it with a gruelingly personal commitment that is fascinating and freakish. If the film is meant to be a warning about the extremes of adoring famous faces, Spinell conveys it by giving it his spontaneous, desperate all. Coupled with the authentic French scenery of the early 1980s, these elements make THE LAST HORROR FILM something a bit more special than most slasher movies.

If that's not enough, the film works largely as a camp curio on the basis of its big reveal as well as its copious amounts of ‘80s-centric atmosphere and the truly fantastic notion of a B-level scream queen, shown having half her face singed into hamburger, being a shoo-in for Best Actress over the likes of Julie Christie (Memoirs of a Survivor), Jane Fonda (On Golden Pond) and Faye Dunaway, who hysterically channeled Joan Crawford in 1981's most infamous "kitsch klassic." Much gratitude is given to Troma for honoring the late Joe Spinell with this very welcome and more substantial double dip of a movie I belatedly experienced, but appreciated just the same as some of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz's finer offerings.

Movie rating: 3/5.
Video rating: 2.5/5.
Audio rating: 3/5.
Extras rating: 3.5/5.
Final grade: 3.5/5.

THE LAST HORROR FILM is a Troma Team presentation, rated R for violence/gore, sexual content and nudity. The run time is 91 minutes in this uncut version presented on DVD.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age