Cinema Fearité presents 'The Last Horror Film'
Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro team up for the final time in 'The Last Horror Film."
A few years back, Cinema Fearité took a look at the legendary William Lustig slasher Maniac, a dirty little 1980 movie that teamed New York everyman Joe Spinell (The Ninth Configuration, Cruising) up with legendary sci-fi -horror scream queen/Bond Girl Caroline Munro (Slaughter High, The Spy Who Loved Me, Don’t Open Till Christmas) for some sleazy grindhouse gore. Two short years later, Spinell and Munro got together again in the similarly gritty and grimy The Last Horror Film.
The Last Horror Film is about a New York City cab driver/aspiring filmmaker named Vinny Durand (Spinell) who believes that he is about to make his big breakthrough movie. All he needs is for famous cult film actress Jana Bates (Munro) to star in it. Knowing that Jana will be at the Cannes Film Festival promoting her newest movie, Vinny hops on a plane to France, hoping to convince the star to work with him. Once at the festival, Vinny follows Jana around with his camera, shooting film and trying to talk her into being in his movie every chance he gets. At first, Jana is just annoyed, but her irritation turns to fear when members of her entourage start turning up dead after getting anonymous letters that say “You’ve made your last horror film.”
Alternatively known as Fanatic, The Last Horror Film was directed by David Winters (who also directed the feature length music video Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare) from a script that he wrote with Judd Hamilton (“The 1980 Sci-Fi Awards”) and Tom Klassen (The Oasis). Both the storyline and the execution have a cheap and dirty tone, sort of like Winter was trying to make an American version of an Italian giallo set in France. Although tame by today’s standards, The Last Horror Film was considered shocking enough in 1982 for it to have found itself next to many of its Italian influences on the “less obscene” Video Nasties list of British films that were subject to prosecution under the law (although The Last Horror Film was never actually prosecuted). And, in typical giallo fashion, The Last Horror Film has a jawdropping twist, even if it is cheapened by a ridiculously silly final scene.
Although the two movies are supposedly unrelated, The Last Horror Film and Maniac seem like spiritual soulmates. Like his Frank Zito character in Maniac, Joe Spinell’s Vinny Durand is an unstable psychopath, finding himself in a self-manufactured delusion of grandeur while simultaneously suffering from extreme insecurity. He believes that he is an important enough artist to warrant the attention of a star like Jana Bates, yet he is haunted by visions of his more successful self always telling him how worthless and subpar he is. There’s a Travis Bickle vibe to Vinny (he’s even a taxi driver) where the audience is never sure if what is happening is inside his head or in the real world. It’s his fantasy; the audience is only renting it from him.
Caroline Munro and Joe Spinell worked together on Starcrash before Maniac, so The Last Horror Film marks their third (and final) collaboration. Munro spends most of the movie running from Spinell, so the pair doesn’t share an abundance of screen time, but there’s an undeniable beauty-and-the-beast chemistry between them. Spinell is a great creepy guy, and Munro is an even better final girl, so the two of them together are one of the most entertaining pairings in horror history.
Whether it’s the New York City street scenes or the segments on location in Cannes, The Last Horror Film was shot in the same guerilla, run-and-gun style that Larry Cohen made famous in movies like It’s Alive, The Stuff, and Q: The Winged Serpent. No permits were secured for any locations, and David Winter used the pageantry of the 1981 Cannes Film Festival to capture the red carpet and arrival footage that he needed to make Jana Bates look like the star that she is. Cameras are everywhere at Cannes, so it was not hard for Winter and his sparse crew to blend in. Most likely, the plane tickets to France were the biggest line item in the film’s budget, since no money was actually spent on permits.
And there wasn’t much money spent on visual effects, either. There are some fun kill scenes and gore gags in The Last Horror Film, but the effects are low budget. Very low budget. The blood and guts are gratuitous, and the effects are simple to the point of looking corny. There are throat slashes and decapitations that are surprisingly light on splatter (how expensive is food coloring and karo syrup, anyway?). The lightweight tone of the effects makes one wonder why the movie was flagged as a Video Nasty in the first place.
The soundtrack for The Last Horror Movie features a handful of songs written and performed by guitarist Jeff Koz (brother of jazz saxophonist Dave Koz) and sitcom theme composer Jesse Frederick (“Full House,” “Perfect Strangers”). Everywhere any of the characters go, be it a nightclub or a film premiere, there seems to be a new wave/power pop tune by Koz and Frederick playing, a typically eighties sounding song with a catchy title refrain to match, something with a name like “Straight Shooter” or “You’re Just a Dreamer.” The soundtrack also includes the first recording by British electronic music legends Depeche Mode, a song called “Photographic,” but that’s a forgettable ditty that gets lost in a sea full of sweet Koz/Frederick pop rock.
Joe Spinell passed away in 1989, so his third movie with Caroline Munro would also wind up being his last. His career saw him play roles in cinematic classics like Rocky, Taxi Driver, and The Godfather, but his real filmic legacy is in his schlocky horror movies. Movies like Maniac and The Last Horror Film.
