Wanting to be a film director, a cab driver travels to the Cannes Film Festival in France with the hope of luring a top genre actress to appear in his horror film but once he finds himself spurned by the industry there sets out to get revenge on everyone as he tries to make his movie.This was quite the intriguing affair. What gives this a lot to really like with this one is the way in which it warps the decadent and flamboyant lifestyle of moviemaking at the time. This one goes into detail with the lavish lifestyle present in prestige motion pictures with the opening detailing the various nightclubs, parties and backstage deals that wound up generating a great deal of attention to the agents and producers at the time. As the maniac goes about throughout the whole festival guerilla-style in the meantime, it creates a wholly intriguing counterpoint that gives this a nice starting point to go on. Likewise, this one really gets a lot to like with the physical torment dished out to the psycho as he goes about fantasizing about his potential career. The various dreams and visions he keeps being subjected to, from being a director on-set to the various dreams of those encounters spurning him or trying to kill him manage to feature frequently for the film to generate some solid suspenseful moments here. That's more than can be said for the rest of the stalking scenes here, from the attack in the movie theater to the series of stalking scenes he employs against her to try to get her into his movie which manages to interject some life into the film. That leads into the fine finale where he plays up the deranged filmmaking attributes in a loving, over-the-top manner which is somewhat fun and cheesy with the way it all plays out. These here hold it up over its rather detrimental issues. The main issue with this one is the fact that it's just impossible to care about anything that transpires from the main character. He's just like any other delusion wannabe artist who thinks that obsession and fandom automatically means he's granted whatever he wants to those who he feels owe him his dreams but in reality know nothing about him. His constant screaming rants and psychotic stalking behavior that occurs throughout the film as he manages to hound nearly everyone at the festival makes him out to be such a deluded personality that it's nearly impossible to follow him on his journey. That's also aided along by the film's biggest problem in that it's just so utterly frenzied and frantic in its performance that it never really gets any kind of worthwhile suspense generated. There's never any kind of a consistent tone established here with the change in direction from the glamorous film-shoots and photo-ops with the frenzied psychotic stalker behavior and then carrying the different ambush attacks on the others which are so sporadic it doesn't register as a truly full-on slasher at times. Otherwise, there wasn't much else to this one.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and Nudity.

I didn't even get one smile out of this - a real eye roller of a film. All I could do is shake my head and roll my eyes at the screen - this is a very boring film.One of those films that I had to hit the fast-forward button often... stop to watch a little then fast-forward again. I couldn't sit though this mess - just not my style of comedy-horror at all.Don't base watching the film on just my review or others - one of those films you will just have to watch for yourself to see if you like it or not.1/10

Disillusioned New York Taxi Driver Vinny Durand (Joe Spinell) is obsessed with cult film actress Jana Bates (Caroline Munro). He tells his mother, with whom he shares an apartment - actually Spinell's home), that he intends to go to the Cannes Film Festival, meet Bates and direct her in a film that will kick-start his career as an acclaimed film-maker. His mother (played by Spinell's real matriarch Mary – the star of the film, in my view) isn't convinced. In a warning uttered without punctuation, she says, "Stop thinking about those crazy ideas, you'll only get yourself upset again, I made baked macaroni, you don't eat right."Caroline Munro seems to be re-dubbed throughout, with an American accent. Visually, she's as 1980s as it is possible to get, her natural beauty often smothered by make-up and hair colouring and styling. She features in my favourite scene – wrapped only in a towel, running hysterically, barefoot down the middle of a bustling night-time road. This includes what appears to be real news footage, charting the assignation attempt on then President Ronald Reagan (himself an ex-film star) in an attempt by an obsessed fan to impress actress Jodie Foster.'The Last Horror Film' is by turns dreadful and very funny (especially the last scene). Every few minutes, we are treated to tracking shots of beaches, movie premieres and parties, incessantly accompanied by tuneless 80's 'songs, with hoarse-voiced singers, guitars and Linn Drums (which help to ensure the running time seems a lot longer than 90 minutes) – against this backdrop, Durrand comes across as a splendidly drab failure, who might even be responsible for a series of gory murders that seem to follow Bates around …Filmed, without permits, at and around the Cannes Film Festival, this is somehow saved from being 'a bad film' by the genuine warmth and heart that belies the bad acting (although Spinell has moments where he is genuinely unnerving) and zero budget. It goes some way to explore whether or not horror films inspire real life horrific events. Bates' comeback is that people watch the news, which is more terrifying than any horror films she has ever seen. It's difficult to argue with that.

"Fanatic" aka. "The Last Horror Film" (1982) is sometimes labeled "Maniac 2", which cane merely be interpreted as an attempt to cash in on William Lustig's ultra-nasty 1980 shocker "Maniac", which featured the same cast. The incredibly creepy-looking Joe Spinell played the eponymous girl-butchering maniac in Lustig's film, and he once again plays a rather demented role here. However, as opposed to "Maniac" which is easily one of the most disturbing American Horror films of the early 80s, "Fanatic" is rather a dark comedy, or a darkly but strongly satirical Horror film to say the least.Spinell plays Vinny Durand, a New York taxi driver, mama's boy, total psycho and fanatical film fan, who plans to make his own Horror movie starring the star he worships, Horror beauty Jana Bates (played by Caroline Munro, who also played the female lead in "Maniac"). He follows her to the film festival in Cannes, where he tries to stalk her, but never manages to come close to her. In the meanwhile, more and more of Jana's associates in the film business end up in gory massacres..."The Last Horror Film" satirizes the 80s controversy whether watching violent and gory Horror films will turn viewers into violent psychopaths. Some fellow reviewers seem to state that the (gory) film absurdly agrees with that ridiculous assumption, but, as far as I am concerned, the opposite is the case: Some people's cry for censorship in the 80s (the decade of the UK's infamous 'Video Nasty' list) is ridiculed by the film. Joe Spinell is always great for extremely sleazy, perverted and creepy roles, and his performance is doubtlessly the main reason to watch "The Last Horror Film". Caroline Munro is a beauty as are most other female cast members, all of whom are eager to expose their breasts. Sadly, "Fanatic" features no suspense at all, and while there is some gore it is not comparable to the disturbing nature of "Maniac". The film has its very funny moments though, mainly provided by Spinell's character's extreme eccentricities. The film is certainly no must-see, but it nonetheless provides a good laugh.