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Peeping Tom is the point of departure, though Dennis Christopher's resemblance to Tom Courtenay also gives the Los Angeles cousin of Billy Liar. The nerd with celluloid in the brain, papering psychotic cracks with classic movie posters. "Why don't you live in the real world with the rest of us?" "No, thanks." The Aussie blonde (Linda Kerridge) catches his eye and in his mind she's suddenly a cooing Marilyn Monroe, the wheelchair-bound aunt (Eve Brent Ashe) knocks over his projector and he's seized by Richard Widmark's Kiss of Death giggle. Cagney gangsters and Universal monsters are among his other modalities, the vengeful spree targets jeering bully (Mickey Rourke), crabby boss (Norman Burton) and perfidious producer (Morgan Paull). A criminologist (Tim Thomerson) follows the trail of corpses and takes an academic view: "It freaks me out because we're planting these crazy images inside of these children's heads." Walter Mitty the deranged buff, Vernon Zimmerman finds him at the seamy crossroads of Seventies alienation and Eighties slashers. Oozing trivia, caressing a blank screen, the protagonist reenacts the Psycho shower with the aspiring bombshell but replaces blood with ink from the autograph hound's pen. A theater of his own is the dream, his script is envisioned as a Fuller yarn to be directed by Bogdanovich. Poison of cinephilia, Hollywood Babylon on parade. "Kenneth Anger would love the Boulevard today." Hopalong Cassidy masks and real bullets in the mise en scène of doleful mania. From The Prince and the Showgirl to White Heat for the dénouement, a grain of Sunset Blvd. atop Grauman's Chinese, a bow to the spotlight on the edge of the abyss. "See you in the movies!" Lustig's Maniac is concurrent. With Gwynne Gilford, James Luisi, John Steadman, Marcie Barkin, and Peter Horton.
--- Fernando F. Croce |