96) Frightmare, AKA Horror Star (1983) - A Nostalgic Horror Rental

 "A star in life is a star in death."

Director

Norman Thaddeus Vane

Cast

Ferdy Mayne - Conrad Radzoff

Jennifer Starrett - Meg

Alan Stock - Oscar

Carlene Olson - Eve

Luca Bercovici - Saint

Scott Thomson - Bobo

Donna McDaniel - Donna

Jeffrey Combs - Stu

Leon Askin - Wolfgang

Barbara Pilavin - Mrs. Radzoff

 

When it comes to VHS tapes once hidden amidst the old shelves of the video rental stores of yore, the 1983 supernatural slasher Frightmare definitely fits among them - hidden and overlooked. 

That's kind of how I found this movie. I came across a VHS copy, plastic clamshell and all, in a bin of movies someone donated to my local library. It's a clean copy, and I grabbed it for free. 

Not to be confused with the 1974 British horror comedy also called Frightmare, the 1983 Frightmare is also known as Horror Star.

Various sources on-line give different release dates for this flick. Wikipedia says 1981. Others say 1982. I'm going with the online horror database allhorror.com which says Frightmare was released Sept. 9, 1983. 

Just for kicks, I also checked whether this movie has any DVD releases. It does. 

The weirdos over at Troma Entertainment released Frightmare on DVD in 2005. I also found a double feature copy of Frightmare from East West Entertainment packaged with Vault of Horror (1973), based on the EC Comic of the same name, and which stars the fourth incarnation of Dr. Who himself, Tom Baker. Stay tuned for that!

Before now, I had never seen nor heard of Frightmare so I really went into this blind. I didn't even so much as read the synopsis on the back cover. I went solely on the title and cover art alone. The cover art, by the way, is completely different from the poster I uploaded to this post. The picture on the clamshell can be found here. -----> *CLICK ME* 

So, basically this movie centers on some pesky college drama students, all of whom are huge fans of horror icon Conrad Razkoff (Ferdy Mayne), and then they die. Spoiler warning, by the way!
Actually the plot is a little more detailed than that. 

It starts with Razkoff playing a vampire in a denture commercial. During a shoot, he gets reamed by the director for giving a supposedly bad performance in his little denture ad. 

Razkoff later spots the director sitting on the edge of an outdoor balcony on the second floor going over some notes. Since the director hurt his feelings earlier, and probably gave him a tummy ache as a result, he sneaks up on him and pushes him off with his cane. 

The director dies when he hits the pavement below. 

Afterwards, Razkoff visits the school where these same drama students are enrolled to discuss his past performances in horror films. During his lecture, he passes out from the excitement around him. Or, perhaps he collapses because his feelings are still hurt. I don't know.

Meg (Jennifer Starrett), one of Razkoff's fans, is able to revive him.    

As he's sitting at home in bed recovering from the bad feels and collapsing, one of his former directors, the obese and sweaty Wolfgang (Leon Askin) pays him a visit.

Ferdy Mayne as Conrad Razkoff in Frightmare.

They discuss what will happen after Razkoff dies. In an attempt to fool the director, he closes his eyes and feigns death. And he does it rather well. 

Wolfgang is dumbfounded that Razkoff actually died right in front of him while they were discussing Razkoff dying. So, he takes the opportunity to speak his mind and ridicule the actor for making life difficult for so many years. 

Suddenly, Razkoff lunges at him, smothers him with a pillow, and kills him. 

And soon after, Razkoff dies, too! This time, he really dies. 

After his body is placed inside a mausoleum, those same drama students - Meg, Saint, Bobo, Eve, Donna, Oscar, and Stu - sneak into the cemetery at night and steal Razkoff's body, coffin and all.

They bring it back to their student house where they hold a horror party which includes wearing masks of their favorite horror monsters during dinner, and dancing with the cadaver of Conrad Razkoff. 

Meanwhile, Mrs. Razkoff (Barbara Pilavin) is desperate to find the body of her husband. She consults a medium in order to channel his spirit so he can tell her where he is. 

And this actually works. Meanwhile, the body of Razkoff rises from the dead in a literal explosion, and he seeks vengeance on the students, one by one, who stole and desecrated his body. He even has telepathic powers that he uses to terrify and kill his victims. Once, he uses his telekinesis to set one of the girls on fire. At another time, he makes his coffin float down some stairs and ram another victim to death.  

There's not much to the story. It's very cut and dry.

I'm grateful for the apparent effort within the movie to create something thrilling. Perhaps, time hasn't been friendly to Frightmare causing the frightening aspects, such as the overuse of fog, several close-ups with colored lighting, and awkward low angles when the story grows tense, to come across as unintentionally laughable. 

Mayne deserves applause, though, for pulling off a convincing cadaver amid all the stuff the other actors do to him, such as placing a live raven on his head. Mayne doesn't flinch, breath, smirk, move or blink. That's talent!
The rest of the acting is like watching community playhouse. For many of the actors, they're just getting through their lines and movements. 
There are some inconsistent cutaways which make me wonder who the hell was editing this movie. A few scenes manage to be a little unsettling and gruesome such as one where Razkoff pulls Oscar's tongue out because, evidently, Razkoff doesn't mess around! 

But despite the effort, Frightmare tries too hard to be a bone-chilling flick, using cliché horror elements to do so.
It's truly a standard horror movie offering all the day to day scares that would work just as well inside a haunted house attraction at Halloween. 
The plot could easily be accidental. There are a few scenes where the actors on screen just run around in a panic in the sloppiest way possible as though the director told everyone "just chase each other around the scene in a scary way. We'll provide the fog and constant close-ups, and just see what we get. Ok? Go team!" It's pretty messy.
Frightmare is the quintessential Friday night Creature Feature that used to air on random local stations. Fans of gore might enjoy it slightly more as there's just enough in there to classify it as a slasher. Heads are lobbed off in slow motion. Guilty parties are set ablaze. Others are bludgeoned to death with floating coffins. Movies like this are entertaining enough for a late night thrill, only to be reduced to "that one movie with that guy...what was it called again?" later on.

I don't really know what this movie is trying to be. A horror comedy? A gory macabre chiller?

Despite its low-budget appearance, Frightmare does have a few notable things going for it. 

Actors in Frightmare acting really, really hard! Hot sticky acting
everywhere...on the walls...in the cracks. Everywhere!

It stars a young Jeffrey Combs in his first horror movie debut. Combs since went on to appear in many other, and better, horror movies including well-known titles such as Re-Animator (1985), Bride of Re-Animator (1990), Frighteners (1996) and Would You Rather (2012). 

On top of that, Scott Thomson also stars in this flick. Thomson has appeared in a lot of movies, horror and otherwise, such as Police Academy 1,3, and 4, Ghoulies (1984) Twister (1996), and Jack Frost (1998). 

And Ferdinand "Ferdy" Mayne strikes me as a poor man's Christopher Lee. At least in this movie, he does. 

In fact, Lee and Mayne appear together in the horror sequel, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985).

But I certainly don't want to dishonor this veteran German-British stage and film actor who has appeared in a lot of films between 1943 to 1995. 

Mayne has shared the screen with many noteworthy actors such as Peter Sellers in The Bobo (1967), Roman Polanski in The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), Ringo Starr in The Magic Christian (1969) Ryan O' Neal in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Destroyer (1984).
Mayne sadly passed away in 1998 at the age of 81. 

The passage of time as turned Frightmare into more of a museum piece as it's Jeffrey Combs' horror debut. And it's a quaint little nostalgic piece of VHS history that surely once warmed the shelf of the horror aisle at any given rental store back in the day. I bet it was often overlooked. In these regards, it's fun to watch.  As a story, I'm not sure what it's trying to be. Despite its best efforts, I was left with a mundane sloppy mess.