{Blu-ray Review} Frightmare (1981) on Troma Blu-ray

“I have never died before, and I want to do it right.”

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Here’s a fun story: John Barrymore died in 1942, at the age of 60. Barrymore was a shining star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and part of a showbiz dynasty that continues into the present day with his granddaughter, Drew Barrymore.

He was also a friend of Errol Flynn. After Barrymore’s death, some of Flynn’s other friends allegedly bribed the caretaker at the morgue to let them “borrow” Barrymore’s body for a few hours, so they could have it pay a final visit to Flynn.

As recounted in Errol Flynn’s 1959 memoir My Wicked, Wicked Ways – actually penned by ghostwriter Earl Conrad and released months after Flynn’s death – director Raoul Walsh and others propped Barrymore’s body up in Flynn’s favorite chair, and then waited for the actor to arrive home.

“The lights went on and my God – I stared into the face of Barrymore!” Flynn recalls. “His eyes were closed. He looked puffed, white, bloodless. They hadn’t embalmed him yet. I let out a delirious scream.”

Flynn apparently ran out of the room, before his friends caught him and told him that it was all a gag. For his part, Flynn didn’t seem to enjoy the humor of it, and his memoir recounts a sleepless night, “shaken and sobered.”

But did it really happen? Well, Walsh later agreed with the recollections in Flynn’s memoir, but the two of them (along with the rest of their rowdy Hollywood friends) were legendary ne’er-do-wells and rogues, who would enjoy the notoriety of the story, whether it was true or not.

According to Will Fowler, the son of journalist and author Gene Fowler, one of Barrymore’s closest friends, father and son sat up with Barrymore’s corpse all night on the evening in question, and it never departed the morgue. So, is one of Hollywood’s most infamous legends true? An unlikely source would seem to indicate that it is.

In a 2020 appearance on the YouTube series Hot Ones – yes, the one where celebrities are interviewed while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings – host Sean Evans asked Drew Barrymore, “Is it true that your grandfather’s body was stolen from the morgue by W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn, and Sadakichi Hartmann so that they could prop him up against a poker table and throw one last party with the guy?”

Her reply? “Not only yes, but there have been cinematic interpretations of that.” In the interview, she mentions Blake Edwards’ 1981 film S.O.B. and the rumors that the incident may have inspired Weekend at Bernies. There’s a more obvious riff on the story that also came out around 1981 but doesn’t get mentioned in the Hot Ones interview: Norman Thaddeus Vane’s supernatural slasher Frightmare.

You don’t have to take my word for it, either. The characters in the movie actually make reference to the event, justifying their own absconsion with the corpse of a fictional horror movie star by saying that “Errol Flynn did it with John Barrymore.”

Frightmare – which was also released as The Horror Star – concerns a college horror film club whose members abduct the corpse of a horror legend from his mausoleum to have one last party with him, only to find the corpse in question returning from the dead and knocking them off one by one using supernatural powers, and occasionally some traps somewhat inexplicably installed in his mausoleum.

The eponymous star is one Conrad Radzoff, played by Ferdy Mayne. No stranger to horror films himself, Mayne will be familiar to fans from such films as The Fearless Vampire Killers, Howling 2, Night Train to Terror, and even Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers.

In spite of his own robust filmography, however, when scenes are required to show Radzoff at the peak of his powers in Frightmare, they are instead clips of a young Christopher Lee in a black-and-white version of the 1959 Italian horror-comedy Uncle Was a Vampire. This isn’t accidental, though, or precisely an oversight. It seems that Christopher Lee was actually the original choice for playing Conrad Radzoff, with Ferdy Mayne taking over when negotiations with Lee fell through.

Just as it took me some five-hundred words to get to the movie I was here to write about, it takes Frightmare about half its running time before any of the horror stuff starts. Once it does, it is what Meagan Navarro calls “80s slashers meets Gothic horror,” complete with plenty of smoke machines, cobwebs, and ground fog.

Until that happens, however, we’re either watching Conrad Radzoff be arch and homicidal, even in life, or we’re hanging out with the members of the Horror Film Society, who include a young Jeffrey Combs in one of his first film roles, years before he would become a horror star himself with Re-Animator.

And here’s the thing: I want to spend more time hanging out with the Horror Film Society. Not because their members are anything all that special – notwithstanding some nice turns by a few of the young actors, we never learn much about them beyond the usual 80s movie stereotypes – but because they seem to be a remarkably well-funded group, despite having only seven members.

Not only do they drive around in what appears to be a club-owned hearse (it even says Horror Film Society on the side), but their clubhouse – where they apparently also live – is in the fabulous Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, which has served as a location for more than 150 different films over the years, according to IMDb. Inside, their clubhouse is decorated with horror memorabilia provided by collectors like Forrest J. Ackerman and David Del Valle.

Even before the killings start, Frightmare feels frightfully disjointed, but it’s a good time at the movies. Originally released on VHS by Vestron, it has been presented on Blu-ray in various limited editions, including by Vinegar Syndrome and 88 Films. However, the version I got for review was a more recent Troma release and, if you can’t guess from that information how good the package is, I’ll tell you that they didn’t even bother to get a high-res image of the cover art.

The movie looks and sounds good, and if you all you want is a high-def release of this charming ‘80s slasher throwback, you could do worse. But the special features and presentation have exactly as much care and thought put into them as you might be able to extrapolate from that fact about the cover, so approach with care, and if you really want a good release of Frightmare, you may want to look for one of those more boutique productions.