45 Years Later: Vernon Zimmerman's Fade to Black

An obsessive cinephile’s love for the movies goes too far in Vernon Zimmerman’s character-driven psychological drama-thriller Fade to Black. After being rejected by an aspiring actress (Linda Kerridge) who happens to look a lot like Marilyn Monroe (and shares a first name with the Hollywood icon), film buff Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher) suffers a mental breakdown and begins killing those who have wronged him, all while dressed up like classic movie characters who have long dominated his vivid imagination.

I think it’s extremely fitting that in the opening moments of Fade to Black, your eye can’t help but be drawn to a cover of Newsweek Magazine pinned to Eric’s cluttered wall near his bed. The headline is simple: A Star for the ‘80s. This feels like the perfect introduction to the world of the film’s central character, as it reflects how young Mr. Binford himself was looking to have his moment in this new decade, and did so by inhabiting Hollywood’s iconic characters of yesteryear throughout this tragic tale.

And throughout Fade to Black, Zimmerman does a brilliant job of meshing together the worlds of classic cinema with the evolving pop culture landscape at the start of a new decade to create a haunting exploration of perception, isolation, and movie fandom.

I think it’s so interesting that in the ever-changing landscape of horror, Producer Irwin Yablans came up with the idea to make a film about a movie buff who has a dark fascination with classic films that he takes too far after finding success with Halloween in 1978. When he was first starting out in the business, Yablans was hired to load trucks for different production companies, and he worked in offices delivering cans of films, much like we see Eric do in Fade to Black (Yablans also didn’t go to film school, so he very much worked his way up, the way that poor Eric wants to here).

But for as much as Eric could be seen as an avatar for Yablans, Irwin saw far more of the character in Vernon Zimmerman when they first met for the project, as Irwin has gone on record saying how he immediately sensed just how passionate the filmmaker was about the history of Hollywood. In a weird twist of fate, Zimmerman already had a similar script written when he was considering taking the helm on Fade to Black, making their impending collaboration seem like it was written in the stars.

Vernon took some of Yablans’ initial ideas from his concept for Fade to Black and incorporated them into what would become the shooting script for their low-budget endeavor that both celebrated the timeless magic of the movies and examined the potentially harmful effects of moving images on impressionable audience members, resulting in a unique melancholic character study of one young man’s fanaticism that continues to defy traditional genre labels to this very day.

At the heart of that character study is criminal psychologist Dr. Jerry Moriarty, played by comedian-turned-actor Tim Thomerson, who spends most of Fade to Black’s running time trying to help local police catch Binford’s movie-minded killer. While Moriarty often clashes with the surly Captain Gallagher (James Luisi), he finds a kindred spirit (as well as a love interest) in Officer Anne Oshenbull (Gwynne Gilford), who trusts in the psychologist’s unusual methodology and thoughtful approach to the case.

By utilizing a character like Dr. Moriarty in Fade to Black, it feels so revolutionary for the time to have a story acknowledge that people are more complicated than just their actions alone. Mental health was not something that was taken very seriously at the time, as typically, psychiatrists were often viewed as “crackpots,” which we see represented in how Captain Gallagher often responds to Moriarty during the film. So, the fact that Zimmerman not only features a mental health advocate but also positions his character as the one person who truly wants to try and save Eric from his cruel fate is pretty remarkable to see in a movie of this time.

For Eric Binford, the mantra “they don’t make them like they used to” was more than a catchy phrase—it was his way of life in Fade to Black and defined every facet of his life, both good and bad. Living under the care of his abusive Aunt Stella (Eve Brent Ashe), Eric’s time is consumed by classic movies, and his never-ending knowledge about film history makes him the prime target for the bullies at his job, especially Richie (played by Mickey Rourke, who at the time was very early in his acting career), who constantly mocks Eric’s social awkwardness any chance he gets.

One night, after being berated by Aunt Stella for keeping himself constantly locked away in his memorabilia-clad room to obsessively watch old movies, Eric’s mental state breaks down after her bullying episode. He lashes out during their fight and pushes the wheelchair-bound Stella down their front stairs in an act that recreates the events of Kiss of Death, and that’s when the line between fiction and fact is forever blurred for the tormented Eric.

It’s also worth noting that the editing from James Mitchell and Barbara Pokras in Fade to Black does a lot of heavy lifting for the story and amplifies Dennis Christopher’s brilliant performance as well. Throughout the movie, we see these key moments from classic movies as they are cut into certain scenes when Eric is interacting with others innocently enough, and then the approach takes a sinister turn when this type of footage is used in the scenes when he’s murdering those who have wronged him. Those touches add so much dimension to the psychology of his character, where we get these glimpses into his mania as it evolves from obsessive fandom into something that just completely consumes him by the film’s end.

As it turns out, Christopher ended up having a huge creative impact on how the story of Fade to Black evolved throughout production. One of the biggest changes Christopher made to his character came in the relationship between his character and Aunt Stella. In the latter half of the film, it’s revealed that Stella is Eric’s mother, not his aunt, and she resented how being pregnant with Eric derailed her career in Hollywood. This backstory came about after Christopher had a conversation with Ashe about the conflict between their characters and what could possibly be causing the aunt’s anger towards her nephew, and that’s when they devised the idea of Stella’s real identity—a creative change that thrilled Yablans.

Again, much like the mental health aspects of this story, I also really appreciate how Fade to Black pulls the curtain, so to speak, about how women were often mistreated by Hollywood for having the audacity to do things that didn’t directly benefit the executives who controlled the studio systems back then. The fact that Stella had to choose between being a mother or continuing her career is such a sad statement about the commodification of women in Hollywood at the time, and for as much as she is a nagging, raging bitch towards Eric throughout most of the movie, I do feel bad for her as well.

Dennis Christopher also encouraged giving his co-star Linda Kerridge more to do in Fade to Black than just playing yet another aspiring actress who happens to be a stunning replica of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe, which is how the role was initially written. Not only did he help encourage the improvisation that happens between her character and Marcie Barkin’s Stacy as they’re jogging along the beach, but Dennis was also integral to altering the course of the events in the penultimate scene, leading up to Fade to Black’s epic finale.

Originally, the photography sequence involving Eric and Marilyn at his studio was supposed to be a reenactment of Monroe’s famous first shoot for Playboy, but Christopher decided that idea felt more like an excuse to have Kerridge shed her clothes one last time, and that it didn’t really fit into Eric’s own perceptions of what that last night between them would be like as she still represented this romanticized figure in his life.

This led to the characters reenacting The Prince and The Showgirl instead, a romantic comedy featuring Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who also co-produced the film through her company, Marilyn Monroe Productions. This change-up certainly feels like a wonderful hat tip to how much Monroe did in the business and how she was so much more than just eye candy, and it’s all thanks to Dennis who clearly respected the icon’s contributions in Hollywood and how they should continue to be celebrated now that she was no longer with us.

The theater that ended up being the location for Fade to Black’s ambitious finale is none other than the legendary Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, which was managed by Elmer Haynes at the time. Normally, it would be next to impossible for a low-budget film to use a location like Grauman’s, but Yablans had made a lot of connections in his career, and he was able to call in a favor to secure the historic locale for Eric Binford’s epic and movie-worthy demise in Fade to Black.

There is a version of the Fade to Black finale where Eric lands on the Marilyn Monroe cement signature in front of the Chinese Theatre, and Linda Kerridge’s character closes his eyes, an act that was meant to tie directly into the film’s title.

Fade to Black arrived in theaters in October 1980 to very little fanfare here in the U.S., but Zimmerman’s heavy-hearted drama-thriller did much better overseas and eventually earned over $15 million in box office receipts. After its theatrical run, though, Fade to Black did just that: it fell into the nebula of distribution limbo, most likely due to the producers being sued in late 1980 by the estate of William Boyd for “copyright infringement” due to the unauthorized inclusion of film clips featuring Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy (Eric portrays Cassidy during Richie’s murder scene, and Boyd’s estate felt that Fade to Black’s treatment of the iconic character was riddled with “contempt and ridicule”).

It wasn’t until 1996 when Fade to Black finally received an official VHS release, and it took more than two decades for Zimmerman’s underseen horror-adjacent gem to get another release when a Blu-ray was finally released in November 2020 courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome. Even if fans had to wait so long to see it (and even own it), I’m so glad that Fade to Black continues to find an audience after all this time, because it’s so great and deserves more love.

It’s also pretty remarkable that in 1980, between Maniac and Zimmerman’s movie, we had two thought-provoking examinations of men who were dealing with familial trauma and featured characters who had built out these fractured versions of their own realities, just in very different ways. I genuinely appreciate how both movies explored the detrimental effects of abuse between Dennis Christopher’s character in Fade to Black and Joe Spinnell’s character in William Lustig’s film, and how neither character is ever portrayed as an outright villain, either.