Star 80 (1983)

People are voting emotionally.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Although many find the subject matter of Star 80 distasteful, there is no getting away from the fact that this is a brilliant piece of film making. The low rating this film has on IMDb is due to the uncompromising and macabre story concerning the murder of playmate Dorothy Stratten by her ex-lover Paul Snider yet on a technical level, Star 80 is an example of bravura filmmaking.Eric Roberts gives a powerhouse performance, which should have been highly rewarded and Mariel Hemmingway has never been better. The continuing neglect of Bob Fosse's disturbing classic is reflected in the fact that no DVD version is available in Europe or America. As a director Bob Fosse was uncompromising and Star 80 is an uncompromising interpretation of the desire for fame. This desire for fame can make people do sick things. This idea in itself is the reason Star 80 is so neglected and rejected. This is the last film by Bob Fosse and clearly shows what a master of the medium he had become. In fact Bob Fosse, with only five films to his credit, can arguably be regarded as one of the greatest film Director's the movie industry has ever seen. Highly recommended and due for reevaluation.

The slimy underbelly of the entertainment industry and the destruction that so often comes along with fame was a theme that lurked behind every movie Bob Fosse made, and it's at its most obvious and aggressively nasty in "Star 80." Eric Roberts plays Paul Snider, a sleazy hood who discovered Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten and then murdered her and himself in an obsessive rage. It's a heartbreaking, violent and disturbing story on many levels; however, the saddest thing about it is that Stratten wouldn't be worth making a movie about if she hadn't been murdered in the first place. What does that tell you about the lure of celebrity?Roberts gives a fierce performance as Snider -- he was a very good and almost completely overlooked actor. Mariel Hemingway plays Stratten, and she's rather vapid, which is all the role really requires. Fosse was not able to keep his cynicism and bile at bay, and so while the movie is accomplished, it's also downright unpleasant to sit through. It's as nihilistic as "All That Jazz" but without the flashy production numbers to add some variety.Grade: B

Mariel Hemingway stars in Bob Fosse's "Star 80", a film based in part on the Pulitzer Prize winning article "Death of a Playmate", and portrays the events that led to the 1980 murder of Dorothy Stratten. Even though Hemingway gets top billing and the film's title refers to her character, the main story falls fully on Eric Robert's shoulders, as the charismatic loose canon that "discovers" her.Roberts brings a gravitas to the smarmy, manipulative, and ultimately violent Paul Snider. His performance is the most engaging part of the film, and unfortunately leaves the viewer wondering whether the movie is little more than a means to show the killer as a three-dimensional individual, thereby making him the only fully formed character in the piece.Hemingway plays Stratten as a one-note naive, easily victimized young woman. It's a decent performance, but she has so few expressions and lacks any real presence that it's a wonder anyone would be so enamored with the woman she plays, and at points her performance is so familiar it feels as if she's back on the set of "Manhattan", the film she was in a few years earlier.The most misguided performance, though, is Cliff Robertson's Hugh Hefner, who brings little more than a pipe and a bathrobe to the proceedings. It would be unreasonable to assume an actor would mimic everything about a real person, but his take on Hefner was so wrong that supposedly "Hef" himself sued after this film's release."Star 80" is certainly not the fluff of the quickly tossed together made for TV movie with Jamie Lee Curtis as Stratten, but for something that obviously had something to say about celebrity and those that struggle to gain it, it hit far short of it's mark.

STAR 80 is a scary movie alright but the truth about the killing of Paul Snider and Dorothy Stratton is even scarier. Paul Snider grew up in Vancouver, B.C. in an apartment complex called Dolphin Court located in Kerrisdale, a higher class neighbourhood. He was pretty much a normal kid, played with all the other children in the complex, Frannie, Janice, Carol, the Nusant, kids, some kids who later became highly distinguished in their fields and some who were never heard of. like me. I remember we would sit around Richard's parents TV watching Maggie Muggins and Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred the wonder dog. What was strange to me was that Paul would climb to the top of the slide at the playground in the center of the apartment complex and look down at me and yell " Penny! Penny!" I wasn't afraid of him I just remember he seemed to be crying out for help. My mother told me that Penny had been his little sister and was killed in an accident. His mother had told my mother that it had not been long since she had died and Paul was missing her.I suppose I looked like her.Not until years later did I learn from my mother that Paul had stabbed me in the back of my neck with a pair of sheers he had found in the basement. No details were ever given for how it happened or why.That was around 1956, Ever since my mother told me that I have wondered what could have happened. When I heard on the radio decades later, that Paul Snider had killed himself and Dorothy Stratto and then saw the movie I know something was all wrong.I now know what. I just have to put a few middle missing pieces together before I can see the whole truth. I am getting close.