Special Effects

“Mary Jean is just dying to get in the movies… She's about to get her wish.”

Chris Neville (Eric Bogosian) is a film director whose career has stalled, and he has just strangled a young would-be actress on camera. He decides to turn the killing into a feature, casting her bewildered husband (Brad Rijn) as the lead and hunting for a lookalike to play the dead woman. Larry Cohen shot it fast and cheap in New York, and the thin budget leaves the film looking like the grubby thing it's about.