Fade to Black

How many of you reading this are movie fans? The kind that people worry are losing touch with reality due to the fact that you collect films and posters and props? How many of you have friends and have some semblance of a life? All of you? Good.

OK, you guys can take a look at Eric Binford and breathe a sign of relief that you aren't him: the worst case scenario.

Eric (Dennis Christopher) is a lonely, obsessed film geek living with his browbeating Aunt Stella (Eve Brent Ashe). His entire life is movies. No friends, no social life, his job being at a film supply company where everyone hates him (his boss (Norman Burton) in particular), he feels that movies are his only friend and source of comfort.

He spends endless hours watching classic films, while Aunt Stella frequently voices her disdain. He frequently quotes them (normally in the voices of the stars that did them), and weirds out a lot of people he meets. However, Eric’s life starts to take a turn for the better when he meets Marilyn O'Connor (Linda Kerridge), a lookalike for Ms. "Seven Year Itch" herself. However, to Eric's diseased mind, she IS Marilyn, his favorite screen actress and frequent source of obsession.

Taken with the charming fellow who treats her as if she were Marilyn, she makes a date with him to see a movie. Unfortunately, she runs into an old friend and unintentionally stands him up.

Big mistake.

This is the capper on a week of bad luck, and sends Eric round the bend into Crazytown.

Aunt Stella finally snaps and wants to get rid of all of Eric's movie collection. However, her electric wheelchair breaks and she can't move, allowing the now psychotic Eric to push her, chair and all, down the side steps in a reenactment of Richard Widmark killing Mildred Dunnock in "Kiss of Death."

Eric (calling himself Cody Jarrett, after the villain from "White Heat") soon begins to dispatch of his enemies in methods used from old movies. He shoots a jerk co-worker (Mickey Rourke) dressed as Hopalong Cassidy, scares his boss to death as The Mummy, and guns down a slimy producer (Morgan Paull) in a barbershop as a gangster, among others, while his obsession with Marilyn grows.

All the while, psychologist Jerry Moriarty (Tim Thomerson) has been sent to teach his methods to the police department. He starts to notice a pattern in the recent murders and winds up hot on Eric's trail with his policewoman girlfriend (Gwynne Gilford). Can Jerry stop Eric from harming Marilyn? Will Eric get out of this alive?

I'm not telling. Watch and find out.