Director: David Winters
Year: 1982
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: The Fanatic; Fanatical Extreme
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Wanting to be a film director, a cab driver travels to the Cannes Film Festival in France with the hope of luring a top genre actress to appear in his horror film but once he finds himself spurned by the industry there sets out to get revenge on everyone as he tries to make his movie.
Review:
This was quite the intriguing affair. What gives this a lot to really like with this one is the way in which it warps the decadent and flamboyant lifestyle of moviemaking at the time. This one goes into detail with the lavish lifestyle present in prestige motion pictures with the opening detailing the various nightclubs, parties and backstage deals that wound up generating a great deal of attention to the agents and producers at the time. Even the general attitude here, with the general air of sleaze and decadence presented by not only the main producers but also the wannabes wanting to catch their break, really generate plenty of extra elements for this. As the maniac goes about throughout the whole festival guerilla-style in the mean-time, it creates a wholly intriguing counterpoint that gives this a nice starting point to go on.
Likewise, this one really gets a lot to like with the physical torment dished out to the psycho as he goes about fantasizing about his potential career. The various dreams and visions he keeps being subjected to, from being a director on-set to the various dreams of those encounters spurning him or trying to kill him manage to feature frequently for the film to generate some solid suspenseful moments here. That's more than can be said for the rest of the stalking scenes here, from the attack in the movie theater to the series of stalking scenes he employs against her to try to get her into his movie which manages to interject some life into the film. That leads into the fine finale where he plays up the deranged filmmaking attributes in a loving, over-the-top manner which is somewhat fun and cheesy with the way it all plays out. These here hold it up over it's rather detrimental issues.
The main issue with this one is the fact that it's just impossible to care about anything that transpires from the main character. He's just like any other delusion wannabe artist who thinks that obsession and fandom automatically means he's granted whatever he wants to those who he feels owe him his dreams but in reality know nothing about him. His constant screaming rants and psychotic stalking behavior that occurs throughout the film as he manages to hound nearly everyone at the festival makes him out to be such a deluded personality that it's nearly impossible to follow him on his journey. That's also aided along by the film's biggest problem in that it's just so utterly frenzied and frantic in it's performance that it never really gets any kind of worthwhile suspense generated. There's never any kind of a consistent tone established here with the change in direction from the glamorous film-shoots and photo-ops with the frenzied psychotic stalker behavior and then carrying the different ambush attacks on the others which are so sporadic it doesn't register as a truly full-on slasher at times. Otherwise, there wasn't much else to this one.
Overview: **/5
On the whole, this one really comes off with way too many flaws to really counteract the few positives to be found which admittedly give this a kind of watchable factor in spite of those elements. Really only give this one a shot if you're into any of the creative members of the project or find this kind of effort entertaining, while those that really aren't swayed by that might heed caution here.
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