Joe Spinell

(In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) It’s weird to compliment a 1980s slasher film for its atmosphere—most of them were visually indistinguishable, existing in a bland universe made up of college campuses or suburban houses that didn’t do much to impress. But if The Last Horror Film has one distinction, it’s how it’s unabashedly set at the Cannes Festival, where a serial killer is targeting victims connected to a scream-queen (Caroline Munro) on location to promote her newest film. The plot and structure are familiar, but the real treat is setting it against real footage of the 1981 festival—complete with posters and promotions of the movie presented at the time! Anti-heartthrob Joe Spinell is the protagonist, a dangerously obsessed fan and wannabe-director who would normally be a creep stalking a young actress… if it wasn’t for the even-worse murderer having himself on a rampage. Writer-director David Winters’ playful approach to its material means that there’s quite a bit of blurring of the edges between reality, publicity and fiction, teasing that the protagonist is a killer and then taking a headlong plunge into metafiction. I usually despise slasher films and am certainly not a Spinell fan, but there’s something more interesting than usual in The Last Horror Film that does catch even a jaded viewer’s attention—a slightly comedic approach (such as suggesting a scream queen could have a shot at the Academy Awards) and conscious intention to set it somewhere unusual that helps distinguish it from countless other VHS offerings. Call it one of the least awful examples of the genre and you’ll get where I’m coming from.