I suppose the truth that Lauren Bacall is enjoying a grotty style movie pastiche of herself at the very least partially explains the half about this being made by individuals who have been embarrassed by it, too. Lord is aware of she wasn’t the one actress of such imposing stature to wallow round in filthy muck within the ’70s and ’80s, and I am unable to think about the argument that The Fan was as embarrassing to Bacall as Trog was to Joan Crawford, or The Swarm was to a slightly substantial variety of folks (although in protection of the victims of The Swarm, it was a particularly costly film in what was, on the time, at the very least a semi-respectable style; the truth that it was an all-time rancid piece of shit that flopped so onerous it killed off a whole filmmaking cycle might hardly have been predicted). However a slasher movie in 1981, that is just about the trash of all trash, at the very least so far as respectability was involved, and Bacall definitely did not mince phrases in deriding the movie when it was new (to be truthful to Bacall, she finally softened on the movie; her costar James Garner apparently endured in contemplating it one of many nadirs of his profession a full 30 years later in his memoirs, which I’ve not learn).
However we needn’t go exterior of the movie to notice a sure rigidity between what the movie is and what it’s keen to confess to itself. The Fan is a film whose battle, climax, and plot construction will not allow it to extricate itself from the dreaded horror style, however it should at the very least do each final rattling factor in its energy to behave like one thing else: it’s a film that places on airs. A kind of airs, definitely essentially the most shameless, is to pitch itself as a Hitchcockian psychological thriller, primarily within the type of its shameless theft of Bernard Herrmann’s rating from Psycho. Which is not even a criticism: I feel the rating is definitely very sturdy, a positive instance of the rule that “good artists copy, nice artists steal”. Composer Pino Donaggio (who had already labored with Brian De Palma on Dressed to Kill, the Hitchcock homage par excellence) is hiding nothing in placing these indignant, slashing violins entrance and heart, however he is constructed them into one thing all his personal. The opening sequence is a superb instance of how music manipulates the viewer’s expertise of The Fan: fundamental Psycho strings over black, that then abruptly minimize off, giving one an virtually bodily feeling of lurching and jerking round. Then the music resumes over a protracted, looping digital camera motion that exhibits us some fragments of our soon-to-be killer’s world, his Hollywood curios, the fragments of his lengthy letter-writing marketing campaign to precise his worshipful love of the Bacall character (Sally Ross is her identify, however I by no means discovered myself considering of her that method), full with an previous headshot of precise Bacall from her precise profession. The sleek, gliding digital camera and the fluid notes of the string mix to make one thing that feels splendidly stomach-churning and vertiginous, including a visceral feeling of terror to the pathetic voice-over narration studying off one of many unctuous letters. After which Donaggio performs the “cease the music chilly” trick once more proper when the narration ends, and at that time the underside simply utterly drops out and the film feels as erratic and delusional as its villain, all filled with scattered bits of jagged psychological chaos. It is not the final time that Donaggio’s music will stand up all boisterous and nasty and manic, and there virtually appears like just a little promise being made in these opening minutes about how a lot the expertise of this movie goes to be coloured by its “Herrmann for drunk killer clowns” musical vibe.
However I used to be speaking concerning the movie’s nice eagerness to make you suppose it is at the very least considerably stylish. The music is an instance of this understanding tremendously nicely. For a counter-example: this factor is gradual. It takes 54 minutes for the primary homicide to happen – that is 54 minutes out of 95 altogether – and that is not inherently an issue. Many movies of round 95 minutes do not even have any murders in any respect. The distinction is that almost all movies haven’t got the situation “a lunatic fan kills folks after his favourite star ignores him”, and Priscilla Chapman and John Hartwell’s screenplay hasn’t give you any particularly sound technique for what to do in all of the components of the film the place the lunatic hasn’t begun killing folks but (he does, to be truthful, non-fatally assault someone with a straight razor in these 53 death-free minutes – additionally, each loss of life in The Fan is executed with the identical straight razor, which makes this some of the slashing-heavy slashers I’ve ever seen). Bob Randall’s 1977 supply novel is in epistolary kind, which can have been a option to keep away from this problem or extra doubtless, if my expertise of epistolary novels is any information, is only a totally different method of getting or not it’s a shapeless grind, however no matter went on within the e-book, the film has a grand whole of 1 technique for holding issues transferring ahead, which is to drop Bacall into prolonged scenes about how a star’s family is managed, or how a star begins the method of assembly the artistic crew for the brand new Broadway musical being written for her to star in, and hope that the sheer power of display presence that she possesses can be sufficient to maintain issues fascinating. Provided that Bacall had among the most domineering display presence of any actor in Golden Age Hollywood going all the way in which again to when she was 19 years previous and saved yanking scene after scene away from a visibly bedazzled Humphrey Bogart, this technique is actually fairly sound and it principally works, although it’s not at all times good. When doubtful, The Fan is completely satisfied to burn a couple of minutes on Sally’s musical rehearsal, giving Bacall an opportunity to sing and (form of) dance in little ten-second slices of musical theater, and I recognize that Bacall appears to be having a superb time stretched some muscle tissue she hardly ever to by no means labored out. But it surely’s awfully tacky materials, and I am not totally determined if I feel that is on function, and the filmmakers are showcasing Sally’s rocky profession prospects, or if it is simply that it was the early Eighties. Both method, it is watchable virtually completely as a result of seeing Bacall sing and dance is surprising and possibly a bit alarming, and never as a result of what’s occurring onscreen is, by itself phrases, pleasant.
Issues go significantly better for The Fan when it is centered as an alternative Sally’s day-to-day life as a well-known, rich New Yorker, reconnecting with a popular asshole ex-husband, Jake (Garner), or discussing the day’s enterprise together with her no-nonsense secretary, Belle (Maureen Stapleton), and that is for the comparatively simple motive that these moments double the variety of high-end film actors onscreen. Garner struggles with a fairly mediocre function – he is solely right here as a result of the killer wants a sexually threatening man to kill, after which he not solely finally ends up dwelling via the entire film, he by no means even meaningfully intersects with the horror/thriller plot components in any respect – however Stapleton is fairly implausible, and the scenes that encompass nothing however her and Bacall buying and selling barbed dialogue about the easiest way for Sally to stay her life are completely satisfying, although not, maybe, very productive. Not for the movie as at the moment constituted, anyhow. The scenes between Bacall and Stapleton are those the place it is best to see the “respectable” model of the fabric that the actors had been inspired to join (that, and I am certain Bacall loved the considered singing and dancing): Sally as a considerably brittle growing old lady skating via life on her peremptory perspective, Belle because the voice of curt knowledge whispering in her ear. It is a reasonably fascinating slice-of-life drama about being a profitable and well-known middle-aged lady who is not being saved busy sufficient to stave off boredom, and there is sufficient lived-in element in each of the performances that it really appears like you might, if you happen to have been Bacall, speak about it on the chat present circuit in these phrases with out your pants utterly erupting in flames.
Nonetheless, the entire thing is braided along with that different model of The Fan, the one about the fan himself – and is it even conceivable that there might be a movie titled The Fan that is not about someone who goes kill-crazy as a result of a star does not pay sufficient consideration to him/her? – and I need to insist that that is definitely not a unhealthy thriller. First-time director Ed Bianchi, who would later have fairly a strong profession in tv, has a superb understanding of easy methods to stage scenes of simmering rigidity: I’ve talked concerning the opening principally by way of Donaggio’s nerve-jangling association of musical cues, but it surely’s simply as efficient due to the way in which that Bianchi constrains what we see and study to transient visible snippets of objects, assembled right into a cohesive complete by the snaking digital camera, deftly employed by the gifted Dick Bush, essentially the most unfortunately-named cinematographer within the historical past of the medium. And all through, Bianchi is clearly centered on holding our killer hidden away, a presence felt and heard however solely seen in bits and items. Since I am lastly speaking about him, his identify is Douglas Breen, and he is performed by Michael Biehn, whose presence was virtually as a lot of a curiosity to me as Bacall’s. What would Biehn enjoying a slasher psycho appear like, I believed to myself. And now I can reply: I dunno, as a result of The Fan is basically under no circumstances certain the way it desires to cope with having a slasher psycho, and it finally ends up giving Biehn principally nothing in any respect to truly do. Given how a lot of the movie is spent listening to his voice as he reads Douglas’s more and more frantic, unhinged professions of worshipful adoration, it is a fairly conspicuous absence within the movie that we principally do not get inside Douglas. I’d evaluate the movie to the later Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which equally presents a feature-length ride-along within the speedy firm of a assassin whose thoughts we by no means fairly glimpse, despite the fact that we get to spend tens of minutes finding out his conduct: that movie makes Henry’s unknowability a part of the principle creative technique, an 80-minute dance alongside the rim of the abyss, daring it to stare again at us. The Fan is not remotely as invested in testing its viewers as Henry is, and its reluctance to truly know Douglas does not find yourself creating its personal disturbing thread of that means. Actually, it simply makes Douglas one of many roughly 300 Michael Myers-types that cluttered the film screens of 1981: that works for Michael, like it really works for fellow class of ’81 killer Jason Voorhees, as a result of they’re so essentially something-not-human, which I feel has so much to do with how they do not speak: Douglas talks an entire lot (I’m assured that there are extra minutes of listening to him with out seeing him than minutes of seeing him with out listening to him), and it appears like if we will spend the entire film with such a florid, hammy chatterbox, we at the very least should get a colorfully maniacal killer out of the deal. Douglas is principally simply boring, not likely scary besides insofar as Bianchi’s peek-a-boo blocking and Donaggio’s gut-twisting rating power the problem onto him, and whereas Biehn is completely positive at enjoying a blank-faced no one, he does not have the looming presence of a pure slasher killer – he is only a damaged, nasty human. So the film would possibly have benefited from treating him as such.
By all means, The Fan is a must-see curiosity – how might it not be, with that logline and that main woman – and Bianchi is an efficient thriller director, even when he is making an attempt to cover it; I feel it is totally doable he is a superb horror director (the film’s third killing, during which a girl is out of the blue yanked right into a room filled with vibrant, cherry-red lighting, is a superb shock scene), although he is positively anxious to cover that. It additionally does handle to make its slowness and its reluctance to do something terribly seedy work to its benefit: there’s an ideal second the place Biehn stands behind a hallway with an unlimited portray of younger Bacall (it might simply be an precise relic of the ’40s or ’50s) looming within the foreground, and it is a static take that merely refuses to chop despite the fact that nothing is definitely happening, simply an growing heaviness because it feels increasingly more like a violation of Bacall’s universe. It is good sturdy bones, each as a narrative and within the directing. It is simply actually unsteady: a extra sordid and tacky model of this is able to have been higher, a extra stylish model of it might have been higher, and the model we received is principally simply locked right into a state of not desirous to come clean with what it is going to be doing for its final thirty minutes. So the top appears like an imposition on the filmmakers and the start appears like an imposition on the viewers.
Physique Rely: 5, plus a non-fatal slashing that does happen earlier than the 54-minute mark; these 5 are crammed actual tight, with two occurring lower than a minute aside, which provides to the sensation that the film simply desires to get that half over with shortly.