Deadline

1980 "His obsession was to create the ultimate horror story… his curse was to live it."
5.6| 1h30m| en| More Info
Released: 01 January 1980 Released
Producted By: Canadian Film Development Corporation
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

A horror film about a screenwriter who loses the ability to distinguish between his fantasy world and the real world, with disastrous consequences. As he ruminates on his place in any world and loses his grip, he also loses his wife and his children's respect, and critics tear him apart. The final undoing of this screenwriter is a deadline that must be met at all costs, costs that perhaps are too great.

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Reviews

Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch
Ensofter Overrated and overhyped
filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
ofumalow This weird Canadian quasi-horror film, about a writer of horror films whose life is falling apart at the height of his commercial success, is disjointed and crude in many respects. By accident, it winds up being pretty much exactly what the protagonist bemoans he's being forced by market pressure to create over and over again: A crass exercise in gory genre nonsense unimproved by much in the way of guiding intelligence, logic or ideas. Still, it's not at all your usual horror movie, and the ways in which it's bad are kind of interesting in themselves. The dominant element in "Deadline" isn't its horror content (though there are plenty of scenes from the hero's fictional work arbitrarily tossed in, involving killer nuns, bloody shower deaths, et al.), but its shrill misanthropy. The protagonist isn't an especially sympathetic figure—he's often defensive, egotistical and rude—but the movie makes sure everyone around him is much worse. While he may neglect his children somewhat in his obsessive attention to work, his awful wife (who has no such commitments, unless apparent infidelity counts) neglects them out of sheer boredom and selfishness, then rails at him for being a bad parent. She's a one- dimensional shrew. Equally shrill and obnoxious are his producer, his new movie's prima-donna star, the students who criticize his work as worthless exploitation when he's given a university award (though he secretly knows they're right)…nearly everyone here is demanding, shallow and parasitical. Even his kids are directed to act in a sort of constant-tantrum mode, though admittedly we're meant to understand that this is the fault of bad parenting. Of course eventually, after a tragic event, the writer hero snaps tether and can no longer distinguish beyond his imaginary horror and real life. This is supposed to be his mentally unhinged reaction against a world that continues to press him into ever-more-violent, disgusting, soulless (but lucrative) creations, insensitive to his disillusionment and trauma. Like everything else in "Deadline," however, this is handled in such an over-the-top, simplistic way it can't be taken seriously. The film's writer-director Mario Azzopardi only made one feature (in his native Malta) before this, then went on to a very long, still-active mainstream career in (mostly) Canadian TV. Given that, it's hard not to see "Deadline" as a likely last gasp of artist-as-an-angry-young-man spleen. (He was just 30 when he made it, though for whatever reason the film wasn't released for another five years.) It's a fairly incoherent statement of that type, but it sure has a lot of rancor to vent. The earlier horror stuff is so pointedly gratuitous it's possible it's just there to create a commercially viable package. But the loathing directed at the film industry and at the hero's wife is so central here that one can only imagine Azzopardi had suffered some not-atypical embittering career setbacks and a very bitter divorce when he conceived this movie. No idea if that's true, but it's as good an explanation of "Deadline's" peculiar, vehement, watchably odd content as any. It's like a slicker, less grungy equivalent to Abel Ferrera's concurrent (in filming if not release) "The Driller Killer," which similarly poses as a horror movie but is mostly an expression of the filmmaker's griping that nobody appreciates a real artist, and how awful people are in general.
BronsonFan This is perhaps my favorite horror film of all time, the relentless gloom and the downward sparrow of all the characters lives within it. Leave you the viewer feeling exhausted , this strain on your emotions leave you feeling venerable. Through out this we are exposed to a fair amount of random violence. The main character Steven Lessey who is a successful writer that makes his living off writing horror novels , that have good fortune in Hollywood. One occasion shows him doing a questions and answer's at a university , upon showing a clip for his new film , after the audience witness the morbid acts of some of his art. They use it against him, pointing there fingers and asking him how dare he create this senseless violence. Steven tries to justify the metaphors that are the under layer of his work, but as the audience pounces more on him, we witness he has no solid answer's.It is soon after this, that his art starts to invade his daily life. Being frustrated and under pressure, he takes on a change . One that creates a big weight for all those around him. The children are caught in the middle of all this, and it is very interesting in there part of Steven's fall into the gutter.I feel that there is so much more I could say about this film, but at the same time , I would risk the chance of giving those who have not viewed it spoilers. So I would rather comment on your need to view this film, if you haven't because it truly is one of the best horror films that I have ever seen. It takes you for a ride and it grips hard the whole time.
FieCrier Entertaining horror movie that offers gore, and a little hypocritical criticism of gore. Pretty well done.A mass-market horror novelist who also adapts all his works for films is having trouble on the set of his latest film, as well as writing the next book or screenplay he's contractually obligated to do. His wife and three kids are neglected, and he is abusive to her when they are together.When he lectures at the university he used to teach literature at, several of the students in the audience criticize his works. He's reminded of what he used to teach, and what he'd said to the director he works with when he first got into films: that once they were successful, they'd do something different. He thinks he's ready to write something different, but the director wants to stick with stuff he feels will sell.Scenes from the above storyline are intercut with scenes from either the author's movies, or ideas he has for movies. Movies are also shown within the movie, as when part of one of his films is screened for the students, and he shows another at a party. They're pretty bloody for the most part!The pressure of having to come up with a new work, trouble with his family, and a horrific event that happens within his family take him to the breaking point.
tutbagsusa Horror movies that reference their own genre have been more prevalent lately, but it seems they come attached with a certain degree of mordant comedy, signifying that the directors probably aren't completely convinced of their own convictions. But that's not really a problem with this film. DEADLINE is a horror picture that begins like any typical slasher film would, but later becomes more laid back in an effort to reflect on itself from an idealistic point of view. The film chiefly appears to be another examination of the effects of graphic violence in cinema on its viewers, particularly child viewers. The narrative framework for all this is built upon the story of a horror movie screenwriter whose life begins to disintegrate when he begins writing for more violent and more lowbrow productions than he'd prefer. As to be expected, it eventually leads to a collapse of his sanity.I liked the film for its first two-thirds because director Azzapardi was trying to do something different and even attempting a resonant observation or two along the way. But like so many of these self-referential type films, it paints itself into a corner in the end to where it doesn't really have an ending. It rather just trails off in the final minutes, not knowing how to tie its various story threads. Nonetheless, its worth a look since much of it does hold some promise, at least before the third act.