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Crimetime (1996)
Written by Brendan Somers
CRIMETIME is a massively successful crime re-enactment T.V. programme a few years in the future. Bobby Mahon, a seriously unsuccessful actor, is suddenly catapulted to stardom when he bears a passing resemblance to the killer of a young woman. At first he is squeamish about the role he is playing but slowly, as the murderer kills again... and again, he starts to become obsessively preoccupied with the mechanics of murder.
Meanwhile, Sidney, the real killer (driven insane by his wife's illness) finds himself a vicarious celebrity, and carries on the murders so that he can continue to see "himself" on T.V. He starts to model himself (with grotesque ineptitude) on his glamorous T.V. persona. Slowly reality becomes blurred in Bobby's and Sidney's mind. Sidney sees himself as a T.V. personality and Bobby begins to cross over the line that separates an actor's role and the reality it seeks to represent.
Ultimately, Sidney realises the full horror of what he's doing, but is forced by his addiction to his T.V. persona to carry on killing. In a scene of jarring violence he is beaten up badly by his tough woman victim and only by accident manages to kill her. He is incapacitated, can't commit any more murders and Bobby is suddenly out of a job.
As Sidney languishes at home, Bobby is plagued by suspicions that he has gone too far in his work on CRIMETIME. He is terrified that he has touched the heart of Sidney's darkness and been contaminated by it. Told by his agent that he has been offered work in Hollywood, Bobby decides to prove to himself once and for all that he is not a murderer. So, with a knife in his pocket, he cruises the bars to find a girl....
The next day, Bobby wakes up with a crippling hangover and discovers that the girl he picked up the night before has been murdered. Terrified that he has killed her, Bobby is forced to meet Sidney and, on a final bloody, confrontation, learns the horrifying truth.
COUNTRIES UK/Germany Co-Production
LOGLINE Thriller about a serial killer inspired by his alter ego on a TV crime re-enactment show
BUDGET $6.5 million
DIRECTOR George Sluizer (The Vanishing, The Stone Raft)
CAST Pete Postlethwaite, Stephen Baldwin, Sadie Frost, Geraldine Chaplin, Karen Black
DISTRIBUTORS CLT/UFA, Alliance Atlantis, First Run Productions
TRAILER YouTubeTrailer
IMDB LInk
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