Killer on Sunset Boulevard (1982)

D. Wayne Hopkin
Colour

Johnny Cash was a pious man. A Christian who put a lot of stake in his faith in God and recorded many gospel tracks – as well as, of all things, a Man in Black Christmas album. But there was also something sinister about Johnny Cash. You don’t bill yourself ‘The Man in Black’ if you want to be loved by everyone. Just as you don’t spend hours practicing a brooding sneer in front of the mirror as a teenager (we don’t think that look just arrived on his face, do we?) if you’re planning to make it as a happy-clappy, Christian entertainer. A faithful man Johnny Cash may have been, but he knew as sure as Alice Cooper knew, that darkness sells. That’s doubly true in films. You can go so far with being pious and Christian on a cinema screen, but you can do a hell of a lot more with sinister.

Even more than the other Monkees, Micky Dolenz clearly craved fame. If you think of the gurning comedy, or the mugging at camera while pretending to play the drums, then clearly this is a man desperate to be noticed. He stood out much more than Took or Nesmith, and made Davy Jones look like a blandly English ex-Coronation Street actor in comparison. There was in Dolenz, an all-round entertainer trying to get out, a counter- culture Sammy Davis Jr – but in reality all he really got to be was drummer in The Monkees.

Here Cash and Dolenz come together in ‘Killer on Sunset Boulevard’. Although, to be fair, it’s hardly a meeting brimming with the anticipation of a Newman/Redford, De Niro/Pacino or even Godzilla/ King Ghidorah.

It’s 1982 and neither of them is at the height of their careers (although Cash would later climb the summit again; Dolenz is no longer able to see it even with high powered binoculars). So it’s an odd combination in an odd film, but one which specifically plays to who they are. From the outside Johnny Cash and Micky Dolenz look odd casting, but on closer examination it’s difficult to think of anyone else playing these roles.

This is a movie which combines ‘The Valley of the Dolls’ with ‘Desperate Hours’. Dolenz is a Hollywood star, an actor and musician extraordinaire, one of the most famous people on the planet according to the oddly fawning news broadcast we see (even the E network would consider it a little uncritical). His character is clearly leading the life Micky Dolenz himself has always dreamt of. There’s a gorgeous wife and two daughters, but more importantly the adulation of the world – who could ask for more? Except, Dolenz also has a deranged fan. This fan takes the form of Johnny Cash, who on this bright sunny day invades Dolenz’s home and holds him and his family hostage. What follows is a tense siege where Dolenz gets more and more desperate for his and his family’s safety in the face of his totally implacable opponent.

I’ll be honest, this is not a great film. Dolenz in no way has the acting chops to pull this off, and comes over more a whining child in a playground rather than a husband and father strung out to the very end of his tether. But Cash is extraordinary, so still and dangerous, with eyes that have years of fear and hurt deep within. Cash – unlike a certain Sun Records colleague – is never thought to have made that much impression of a film, but here we have an embryonic Hannibal Lector and the template for a million other screen psychos to follow.