The Fan (1981)
Director: Edward Bianchi
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Tacky adaptation of Bob Randall's novel in which (prefiguring the Jodie Foster case) a Broadway star's youthful fan (Biehn) graduates from epistolary devotion to homicidal mania when his overtures receive increasingly curt responses. Since impending shocks are loudly telegraphed in advance, and mainly comprise a series of virtually identical slasher attacks with open razor, the result is crude, nasty and predictable. Sole reason for watching the film is the wonderful Bacall as the toast of Broadway, currently celebrating yet another forty-ninth birthday, curling her basso purr round lines to make their banality sound like wit, and rehearsing a musical (songs by Marvin Hamlisch) that gives her the chance to strut her stuff as a song-and-dancer.Author: TM
Cast & crew
Director: Edward Bianchi
Producer: Robert Stigwood
Cast: Lauren Bacall, James Garner, Maureen Stapleton, Hector Elizondo, Michael Biehn, Anna Maria Horsford, Griffin Dunne full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 95 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now