Fade to Black (1980) Review

“Mr. Berger, if you're firing me, I need to get my stuff out of there and my movie posters. My posters are valuable originals and I want them!”

   There are a few handful of films that about cinephiles such as ‘The Dreamers’, ‘Cinema Paradiso’, and ‘Hugo’, but for me my first film about a cinephile was ‘Fade to Black’. Essentially it’s a film about a cinephile whose obsession gets the better or him. It’s a film that both celebrates and condemns a deep love of film.

   The film centers on Eric. Everywhere he goes he is ridiculed, shunned, and ill-treated so he retreats into his movies as an escape. Black and White films are Eric’s refuge from a society that hates him. His aunt blames him for putting her in a wheelchair for something he had no control over. His boss of an advertising firm constantly calls him a fuck-up. His co-workers, who are cinephiles themselves, abuse him at work. Even strangers think he’s a creep. He has a substantial amount of movie knowledge, which he uses as pay back against his co-workers with trivia questions that they can’t answer (this is before Google and cellular phones). 

    ‘Fade to Black’ references many of the Golden Age films and many horror films as well. The film creates its very own monster as well… the cinephile pushed over the edge. Eric is a guy who thinks, lives, and breathes cinema. Then add that with his cynicism with life and he turns into morbid monster. It’s like a ‘Walter Mitty’ story gone wrong. His fantasies make him encouraged, unique, and they are also his coping mechanism to deal with a society that hurts him. When he coping mechanism goes full throttle and drives him into delusion… he starts to murder those who have done him wrong.

    The writer and director Vernon Zimmerman clearly knows what he’s talking about here, filling every scene with film references whether it’s in the dialogue, in the set decoration (there’s even a Tourist Trap poster at his workplace), and there are plenty of clips from some of the best Golden Age films even my favorite Cagney film. 

     Dennis Christopher played Eric. You actually feel sympathy for the guy. He just wants to escape from reality and watch his movies. When I first watched this film as a kid. I was so happy to see that there was someone like me; not the killing bit though, but that there was someone who loved the movies as much as I did. I didn’t feel that alone and knew there has to be another cinephile like me. Once again this was before social media. I actually still have the VHS somewhere. I wish they would release this film on Blu-ray already.

  All-in-all, this is an amazing and memorable experience for any cinephile. If you love film, Golden Age Hollywood, and horror this is the film for you. You can stream it on Shudder until we finally get a Blu-ray release.

5 out of 5 film reels