My experience with Lauren Bacall comes almost exclusively through the prism of her collaborations with Humphrey Bogart. I know I have seen her in the latter stages of her career, in smaller roles like Misery.
I first heard about this movie decades ago on a horror movie website running down a list of slashers and adjacent thrillers.
The cast (Bacall and Terminator/Aliens star Michael Biehn) were part of the appeal, as was the cultural clash (classic Hollywood and proto-slasher). I had not been able to track down a copy for years. My local arthouse, the Academy, has screened the film a couple of times, and I was finally able to see it about a week ago.
As a film, The Fan is not a blood and thunder thrill ride. It is smaller, more concerned with character than set pieces.
While it was never that scary, there is something potent in this movie. It might just be a reflection of the current moment, and the way social media has turbocharged parasocial relationships, but despite coming from an analogue era, it is pretty effective as a reflection on the toxicity of fandom.
Douglas’s fandom is reflection of a deep-set conservatism and misogyny - he is obsessed with a star from before the end of the Hayes Code. He shows no interest in other people, and seems particularly hostile toward women his own age. The one young woman he interacts with is a fellow employee at the record store - she is not really a character, but based on the snippets we glimpse of her she appears to be a single woman who does not fit into the archetype he is obsessed with.
Douglas’s mindset feels like a response to the seventies, with its greater permissiveness regarding gender roles and sexual identity.
There is a contradiction to Douglas’s object of affection which he seems incapable of recognising - Bacall’s Ross, like the actress herself, has a star persona based on, both extreme self-possession and a reversal of gender roles.
Of course, Ross also has more nuance and definition than even this image - she depends a great deal on her relationship with her secretary Belle (Maureen Stapleton), and pines for her ex-husband Jake (James Garner).
In the seventies, Bacall had gained a second wind as a musical theatre star, in the stage adaptation of All About Eve. There is not enough context to the show-within-a-show to make it a clear analogy - we get a couple of songs which seem to be based around presenting Ross as a free spirit, in a way that both echoes Douglas’s worship and repudiates it.
Aside from the aspects mentioned, I am not familiar enough with Bacall’s offscreen biography to confirm if there are any other analogies within the film.
It feels like a proto-version of a nineties thriller, with the [blank] from hell an obsessed fan (the concept would get this treatment in Tony Scott’s identically titled film starring Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes).
As a thriller, it is fine, lent a little more juice by Bacall’s history and presence.
There are no real standout set-pieces - the filmmakers never make a meal of any particular scene (the pool slashing comes close).
It is more of a slow burn study of both central characters.
Biehn is effective as Bacall’s nemesis. He brings an earnestness and intensity that is particularly effective in the early scenes, as he narrates his increasingly delusional correspondence with Ross.
The film is pretty damning in its presentation of heterosexual masculinity - Douglas keeps to himself and obsesses over a woman he can never have, while Jake is marrying a much younger woman. Hector Elizondo also plays the cop in charge of the case, but he is completely ineffective.
Aside from those characters, Ross is surrounded by women, from Belle to the female cop who becomes her low-key bodyguard (she is often positioned with Ross, but barely has any dialogue).
The film is filled with gay and gay-coded characters, mostly from the musical production, and it is one of the film’s more subtle points that Ross seems more comfortable and secure in this space than she does outside it.
The Fan feels like a dry run for something more complicated and disturbing. The performances are strong, but the film feels room temperature - it feels like it is on the cusp of becoming something more than what it is.
