A bookshop clerk starts seeing the disfigured killer from her favorite 1950s pulp novels come to life and start killing people around her.
16 May I, Madman (1989)
The Misadventures of Margaret
The setup here is a typical fold. An actress has a day job in a book store. She reads horror books and imagines herself in them. One day, she comes across an author who, when writing, had the story and real life merge. In reading the books, they “come alive”.
Her actor and book friends (plus a pianist) are murdered to provide parts of the writers face. This is such a clever idea that it attracted me to dig out this old project. The writer even understood the redhead thing: the first murder is to get the red hair of an actress we see playing Desdemona.
Natch, the boyfriend is a police detective assigned to the case.
What we see is simply turning the crank, but when do poor production values bother kids? The idea is the thing. It isn’t a folded giallo, instead a dim reference. But it is better at root than “Stay Alive”, a similarly folded kiddiething with which I saw this.
Posted in 2006
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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