FADE TO BLACK

Eric Binford is a chain smoking, socially awkward and unlikeable young man who is also an obsessed film addict. His love of old films extends far beyond his job at a Los Angeles film distributor's warehouse and endless late-night film screenings in his bedroom. For his vast knowledge, Eric has been bullied by his coworkers and family. His singular obsession eventually turns into psychosis after he crosses paths with Marilyn O'Connor, an Australian model and Marilyn Monroe lookalike who becomes the physical embodiment of his cinematic desires.

After Marilyn unintentionally stands up Eric on their first date, he becomes homicidally unbalanced, transforming himself into a gallery of classic film characters—including Dracula, The Mummy and Hopalong Cassidy—and sets out to destroy his oppressors, starting with his abusive and crotchety Aunt Stella, pushing her wheelchair down a staircase to her death (reenacting a scene from Kiss of Death (1947)) and making this look like an accident. Eric attends her funeral dressed as Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark's role from the aforementioned film).

Eric then dresses up as Dracula to attend a midnight screening of Night of the Living Dead (1968) at a local cinema. Afterwards, he bursts in on Marilyn in the shower while looking for an autograph in a scene straight out of Psycho (1960); he escapes and targets Dee Dee, a sex worker who had snubbed him earlier. She trips, impaling herself on a picket fence, and Eric licks her blood off his fingers.

Eric becomes more and more unhinged from reality and his antisocial behavior in public becomes more erratic and violent. A few nights later, Eric dresses up as the cowboy Hopalong Cassidy, when he shoots and kills Richie, a boorish co-worker who taunted him on a regular basis and beat him up after welching on a bet that Eric won. Not long after, Eric dresses up as The Mummy and drives his mean and vindictive boss, Marty Berger, into suffering a deadly heart attack while he is working late at night at his distribution warehouse.

Finally, Eric dresses up as gangster Cody Jarrett (from White Heat (1949)) and kills a sleazy filmmaker named Gary Bially, who stole his idea as his own for an upcoming feature film inspired by Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (to be called Alabama and the Forty Thieves) at a barber shop in broad daylight, which finally gives away his identity. Eric then eventually works his way toward Marilyn, hoping to lure her to his side.

Investigating the murders is a criminal psychologist named Dr. Jerry Moriarty, who tries to find a pattern to the murders and find Eric, to help or stop him, with the assistance of Officer Anne Oshenbull, a friendly policewoman who has discovered that Eric's Aunt Stella is actually his mother who blames him for her ending up crippled. Moriarty's investigation is hampered by his own mean-spirited and nasty boss, Captain M. L. Gallagher, who tries to stop Moriarty's investigation because Gallagher wants to take all the credit of finding the killer for himself.

This all leads to Eric luring Marilyn to a photography studio where he drugs her to reenact a scene from The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) which is interrupted when Dr. Moriarty arrives, and Eric is forced to run with Marilyn at his side. This leads to the Mann's Chinese Theatre where the insane Eric is shot by the police on the roof of the building while reenacting Cody Jarrett's death scene in White Heat. Eric then falls off the roof to his apparent death on the pavement below.