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Fade
To Black
(1980) |
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Looking back, this film seems like a precursor to Wes Craven's Scream in that the central character certainly qualifies as a person who has taken his "love of horror movies one step too far." The film follows the humdrum life of studio errand boy Eric Binford - a life which he tries to escape from regularly by slipping into a dreamworld inhabited by the film characters he is so obsessed by, most of them horror movie characters. Slowly he loses control and exacts revenge on those people he perceives as sabotaging his happiness. Revenge is chillingly carried out reenacting some of Binford's favourite scenes to horrifying effect. Fade to Black is a good idea with potential, as Scream demonstrated, but here the director Vernon Zimmerman allows the tension to slacken far too often resulting in a film with some effective set pieces rather then one where tension slowly builds up to a crescendo. Dennis Christopher, best remembered in the superb Breaking Away, does an earnest job as Binford and overall its a fair effort, but not scary or tense enough to truly make the grade alas.
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