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| Images courtesy of Troma Entertainment |
Just a couple of years after William Lustig and actor Joe
Spinnell ventured out into the New York City night prowling the streets as a
serial killer preying on prostitutes in the highly controversial exploitation horror
classic Maniac, a transgressive shocker featuring grisly makeup effects
work by Tom Savini which ran into censorship problems and notoriety in the US,
Spinnell joined forces with former West Side Story child actor turned choreographer/director
David Winters in ostensibly a comedy horror riff on the furor surrounding Maniac
with The Last Horror Film. At
once a tongue-in-cheek goofy satire of the movie industry machine’s regard for
modern horror set in the heart of the real-world Cannes Film Festival, shot
guerilla style without obtaining permits, and a chance for Spinnell to lampoon
his character from the brutal Lustig film The Last Horror Film for many
years was considered partially lost to time as some of the gore effects were
cut from theatrical prints and were only available intact on subsequent VHS
copies.
In 2009, Troma Entertainment the outfit behind The Toxic
Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet spearheaded by Lloyd Kaufman and
Michael Herz, put out their own DVD with the gore shots taken from VHS prints
before re-releasing it again in 2015 albeit in scratchy dilapidated form. Horror periodical Rue Morgue magazine
put together a joint effort to track down surviving film elements and restore
the picture to its original vision, ultimately leading to the location of an
uncut 35mm print discovered by author Guillaume Le Disez at the La Cinémathèque
française. Soon after in 2023, this
version was used by cult boutique distributor Severin Films in a new 4K digital
scan and released in limited edition quantities on 4K UHD disc with special
lenticular slipcovers including the Maniac II fake poster for which it
was billed in some territories as well as the title Fanatic in the
US. Now that deluxe release has long
since sold out and gone out of print for exorbitant costs on eBay through third
party sellers, but in a unique turn of events, it appears as though the
distribution rights have once again reverted back to Troma Entertainment and
for a third time they’ve decided to release The Last Horror Film on
Blu-Ray disc this time using the same 4K scan for those who missed out on the
Severin.
Vinny Durand (Joe Spinnell) is a New York City cab driver
(funny considering he was Travis Bickle’s boss in Taxi Driver) living
with his mother in their drab apartment where he dreams of becoming a major horror
film director with scream queen Jana Bates (Bond girl Caroline Munro reuniting
with her Maniac co-star) as he leading lady. Hopping a flight to the prestigious Cannes
Film Festival in France where she’s in competition for the Best Actress award
for her latest horror film Scream, he follows her around hoping to meet
and talk with her about maybe doing a film together. In attendance with her manager and ex-husband
Bret Bates (Glenn Jacobson) and her boyfriend Alan Cunningham (Judd Hamilton). However red flags are raised when, compounded
with Vinny’s stalking including secretly filming Jana from afar, cast and crew
members including director Stanley Kline (David Winters himself making a cameo)
start receiving mysterious death threats in signed letters. It doesn’t take long for the body count of
those involved with the production of Scream to start rising, but who is
really doing the slaying? Is it Vinny or
something bigger than himself or his unwilling intended lead?
At once a horror yarn goofing on the notoriety of Maniac while
sneakily being a documentary infiltration of the height of the Cannes Film Festival
proceedings including a red-carpet photoshoot featuring Kris Kristofferson
worked into the narrative, The Last Horror Film while not skimping on
the gore or violence factor is a much smarter film than the one it’s lampooning
Maniac. Kind of a meta
movie-within-a-movie crossbreed of conventional low budget horror and
streetwise scrappy Cannes documentary, one of the highlights and virtues of
this uncategorizable horror satire is how you’re not always sure of how to
react. Whereas Maniac was a
thoroughly repellent deep dive into the double life of a serial killer, The
Last Horror Film is kind of an inspired mixture of sexy, funny, gross
tongue-in-cheek satire that is above all enamored by the cult of personality
that is Joe Spinnell. Plus somewhere
along the way, Joe Spinnell dresses like Dracula and it lands as one of
the film’s more hilariously madcap sight gags amid the many unexpected twists
that crop up near the third act.
An innovative and at times brilliant horror-comedy that
tragically got lost to time, getting a miniscule theatrical run before being
dumped on video (albeit uncut), The Last Horror Film is something of a
treat for genre fans, Maniac fans and Joe Spinnell aficionados keen on The
Godfather actor’s inspired personality as well as his carefully cultivated
screen persona. As aforementioned, it
came out on a fully restored UHD box after years of being unavailable or only
in truncated degraded prints but it was limited and sold out of stock very
quickly so the upcoming Troma Entertainment Blu-Ray is your next best
option. Sure it comes with an
unskippable introduction by Lloyd Kaufman dressing in drag prancing around
acting silly, but as of yet this is the best commercially available release
version of The Last Horror Film that won’t cost you an arm and a leg in
search of secondhand copies.
--Andrew Kotwicki
