Skinny, whiny-voiced Dennis Christopher is one of the all-time great psychotic nerds in this classic slasher flick. He’s your basic loner nebbish, a guy who spends his copious free time watching old movies and absorbing film history trivia. A lot of guys like this become drag queens or critics, but Dennis Christopher becomes a serial killer. He starts by shoving his belittling, wheelchair-bound shrew of an aunt down a flight of stairs exactly like in Richard Widmarks’s famous scene from the 1947 Kiss of Death. After that, he goes out each night dressed up as a classic movie character—everything from Bela Lugosi in Dracula to Hopalong Cassidy to Laurence Olivier in the The Prince and the Showgirl—and turning anyone he doesn’t like into canned ravioli.
A young Mickey Rourke shows up as one of the victims.