The Last Horror Film (1982)

Joe Spinell plays a New York City cab driver named Vinny Durand who is obsessed with a famous actress named Jana Bates (played by Caroline Munro).  Vinny wants to put her into his movie, if only she will talk to him.  So he heads off to the Cannes film festival to basically stalk her until she talks to him.  One person and situation after another keeps getting between Vinny and Jana.  But soon those people start to turn up dead.  This opens the door, or really the window, for an eventual meeting between Vinny and Jana.  Though Jana isn’t entirely thrilled with the man crawling thru her bathroom window trying to pitch his script!  The movie throws a couple of interesting twists at the audience towards the end and finishes on one of the funniest lines that I’ve ever heard an elderly actress deliver.  Don’t really want to say much more and ruin the movie. 

I love this movie.  I understand that it has some flaws.  The story is paper-thin and honestly doesn’t have enough meat to fill the feature length runtime.  Much of the movie is Joe Spinell adlibbing things in character and wandering around Cannes with his video camera.  I’ve seen way too many low budget movies try to do something like this and it never works.  But the difference here is Joe Spinell.  The Vinny character is much like his character from Maniac, only just a bit less menacing and twisted.  Watching him in this character talking to himself, calling his mother, and stalking Jana is fascinating.  Spinell has the screen presence and charisma that makes damn near everything he does on screen interesting.  Again a lot of fans rip on this movie for it’s pacing and clear lack of direction.  I can’t really disagree with these criticisms, but I guess I’m such a Spinell fan that getting to see him in another oddball disturbed character is way too much fun for me not to like this movie. 

I’ve already talked a bit about Spinell’s performance, which I think is brilliant and fascinating.  He is forced to carry the movie, which again is clearly lacking much in the way of story. Caroline Munro on the other hand was sort of disappointing.  Though I don’t want to be too harsh because I don’t think there was much for her to work with.  I say this because the few scenes that she directly shares with Spinell are great, but when it is her working with other actors I just wasn’t that interested.  The rest of the cast all have small parts are aren’t that memorable. 

Much of the movie is shot in Cannes in and around locations that seem to have been out of their control.  There are a few times where people in the background are staring at what is being filmed.  For me this gives the Last Horror Film a cool guerilla filmmaking feel to it that works and makes the movie that much more fun.  The camera work and lighting are uneven and the movie is a bit dark at times.  But then again this is the kind of movie that I think can survive defects like this.  They do pull some nifty effects work with an electrocution and a beheading to mention a couple.

The Last Horror Film is a must have for any fan of Joe Spinell and recommended to horror fans in general.  In spite of it’s flaws the movie is worth checking out and owning.  It just came out on DVD from Troma, more information can be had at their website at http://www.troma.com/

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer