Those of you who regularly read my reviews will probably recognize that I often begin my discussions of low-budget 1970s and '80s horror films with reference to their videocassette covers, which I saw time and time again as a kid in grocery stores (which, yes, used to have their own video rental sections, usually in the front) and Blockbuster Video. At the time, those indelible covers were the movies for me (since I was too young to see them), although time and experience has taught me that there is more often than not a vast, vast difference between the two.

Having already waxed rhapsodic about the misleadingly huge Nazi zombies on the cover of Shock Waves (1977) and the robotic hand holding the bag of body parts on the cover of Chopping Mall (1986), I now turn my attention to the cover of Frightmare, which has the unique distinction of having been released on videocassette a month before it played in theaters starting in mid-October 1983 (it was actually shot back in the summer of 1981). I don't know when I first saw this videocassette cover, but my recollection is that it was in every video store I ever went into. Featuring a woman's hand rising out of the ground, grasping a skull with a massive dagger stabbed between the eye socket holes and a snake draped around the back and top, it is a classic amalgam of horror signifiers (including a creepy old house, full moon, leafless tree branches, and lightning), virtually none of which actually appear in the movie itself. The title is similarly designed primarily to evoke a visceral response, rather than allude to anything in the story, having been ripped off from a 1974 British horror film to replace the original working title The Horror Star, which is actually quite appropriate.

And that is because the monster in Frightmare is a horror star—an eloquent, aging thespian of the old aristocratic mold with sharp features and penetrating eyes named Conrad Ragzoff. Played by character actor Ferdinand Mayne, who looks like a mash-up between Vincent Price, John Carradine, and Christopher Lee, Ragzoff is first seen being berated by an upstart commercial director (Peter Kastner) who is incensed that he isn't hitting his marks. Insulted by this brash display of youthful arrogance, Ragzoff pushes him over a balcony to his death, which immediately establishes two important elements of the film: (1) Ragzoff is a murderous fiend (he quips "Take 19" after the push, suggesting he has killed 18 previously), and (2) there is little attention to be paid to any semblance of reality or logic, given that somehow no one notices him commit this ghastly deed despite being in the middle of a crowded film shoot.

But, alas, realism and logic have little place in Frightmare, which is primarily about misty atmosphere and the kind of over-the-top theatrics that act as cover for acting deficits and narrative holes—of which there are many. Most of the story takes place inside a massive Gothic manor that is apparently the home of a university's Horror Film Society, which hosts Ragzoff for an evening event. Shortly thereafter Ragzoff dies of a heart attack, and seven members of the horror society—played by Luca Bercovici, Jennifer Starrett, Alan Stock, Carlene Olson, Scott Thomson, Donna McDaniel, and Jeffery Combs (yes, that Jeffrey Combs, who would go on to infamy in 1985's Re-Animator)—decide it would be a good idea to steal his body from its tricked-out mausoleum (which includes neon lights and a giant television screen that plays prerecorded video of Razgoff) and hang out with it for an evening.

Meanwhile, Ragzoff's widow (Barbara Pilavin), upon learning that her deceased husband's body has been snatched, performs a séance with a medium (Nita Talbot) that somehow brings Ragzoff back to life to wreak vengeance on the snatchers. Thus, in slasher movie fashion, Ragzoff starts offing the dim-witted horror students one by one, none of whom ever catch on to what is happening before it is too late. Even when their numbers start dwindling in ways that seem very suspicious and one of their charred bodies is left unnoticed on the front lawn, they never leave the Gothic manor, thus ensuring that Ragzoff has plenty of victims to pick off each night (which he does both physically, ripping one character's tongue out with his hands, and also psychically, such as when he causes a character to spontaneously burst into flame).

The generally dim-witted plot and unpleasant septet of college students is offset to a large degree by the film's unusually pronounced style, which is the handiwork of cinematographer Joel King. Although not a household name in cinematic circles, King spent much of the 1970s working as a camera operator on some notable films, including Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue (1980), and Richard Rush's The Stunt Man (1980). When he shot Frightmare, he had only worked as the lead cinematographer on two forgotten low-budget horror films, Sketches of a Strangler (1978) and Just Before Dawn (1981), but he had clearly absorbed a deep understanding of the importance of light and shadow in creating mood and tension.

The film is also bolstered by the campy-erudite performance by Mayne, who was usually billed as "Ferdy Mayne." He had already acted in hundreds of films and television series since the 1940s (including films by Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick), and he clearly relished the opportunity to play the stately slasher Razgoff in high style. While he had played major roles in numerous horror films, including Count von Krolock in Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and the doctor in Hammer's The Vampire Lovers (1970), Frightmare was his first and only leading role in the genre (while the film was still in theatrical distribution, he was awarded the 1984 Golden Scroll Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror).

Writer/director Norman Thaddeus Vane had been working in the film industry for several decades at that point, primarily as a screenwriter and producer. He began his career as a playwright in England, and he had directed one previous film, a small British drama called Conscience Bay (1960). He had written screenplays in a range of genres, but the only horror credit to his name at that point was a script for an episode of the horror television series The Evil Touch (1974). In making Frightmare, he was clearly hoping to tap into deep genre fandom, hence making all the main characters members of a Horror Society and covering the walls of their manor with horror movie posters, including Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) and, most humorously, the Mayne-starring Fearless Vampire Killers. He also peppers the dialogue with a few in-jokes and obscure references, including the legend that Errol Flynn stole the corpse of his recently deceased friend John Barrymore in 1942. Chances are high that the people who went to see Frightmare during its initial theatrical release—drawn in by that indelible poster art, I imagine—had no idea what they were talking about. They were also probably baffled by the merging of already rote slasher rhythms into a film that aspires to the Gothic decadence of the high Hammer period. Frightmare is neither here nor there, and that is its greatest problem.

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