Halloween Horrorfest 2018: FRIGHTMARE (a.k.a. THE HORROR ACTOR, 1983)

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this (Gee, I’ve said that before), as there’s really not much to talk about here.  This is a low budget indie horror film that was picked up for distribution by Troma in the early 80‘s, and boy, does it look it.  Hell, there’s a credit for ‘New Wave Hair’ at the end, and that’s as 80‘s as you can get.  Its one claim to fame is that it features Jeffrey Combs (two years before he got his Star Turn in Re-Animator) as one of the interchangeable teen victims of a dead horror star who is revived with unspecified psychic powers.

The interchangeability of our hapless protagonists is one of the problems with the film.  With the exception of Combs’ Stu, who we are able to recognize because he’s Jeffrey Combs, the only character in this six pack of Horror Movie Loving Corpses-to-Be is Jennifer Starrett’s Meg--and that’s only because she’s obviously the designated final girl judging from the way she performs CPR on our dying villain, and also because she has an uneasy resemblance to Barbara Crampton.  There’s also this blonde girl with blue streaks in her hair that I thought was kinda hot, the guy that looks like Jeff Conaway from Taxi, the brunette who was cast because she was willing to show her breasts, and the douche who wears sunglasses everywhere.  I had a hard time keeping these characters straight, which made it hard to care when, let’s say, one is beaten to death with a coffin or the other bursts into flames.

Of course, having the sketchiest of sketchily drawn victims can be redeemed by having a great villain.  Conrad Radzoff, played with proper slices of ham by Ferdy Mayne, shows promise in the first act--he kills two people before dying himself and boasts of returning from the dead.  But once he is revived by a medium, Conrad just stalks around silently, pressing his fingers to his temples and swishing his cloak like Bela Lugosi.  After establishing Conrad has a morbid wit, the script refuses to give him any personality as an undead killer.  It seems as if writer/director Norman Thaddeus Vane thought the pre-recorded ‘messages’ Conrad left in his neon-lit crypt were sufficient to make him a scary presence...but those short speeches are not enough.  Frightmare needed to have more humor and verve during the last forty minute stalk-and-slash, and they’re sorely lacking.

There are other problems with this film--Vane’s script is poorly constructed as a whole and there’s a sense that he’s uncomfortable with the gore.  It’s not a bad film, but it’s not really good at all.  There’s an idea for a great film here, but Vane did not find it, so Frightmare has to be not recommended.

Be sure to go to my Twitter page and vote for what I watch for tomorrow's Halloween Horrorfest entry!