Trashy and opportunistic, NUMBER ONE FAN applies erotic thriller conventions and style to the celebrity-stalker syndrome with sleazy results.
Zane Barry (Chad McQueen) is a hot young action star making his latest film and planning his wedding with his fiancee, movie costumer Holly Newman (Catherine Mary Stewart). At a party, he and gorgeous young Blair Madsen (Renee Ammann) catch each other's eye, and he allows himself to be seduced by
her. She proves to be a childhood friend and longtime fan from his hometown, and the next night she talks Zane into missing the premiere of Holly's first film and sleeping with her again. Assuming this is the last he'll see of Blair, Zane patches things up with Holly, but then Blair accosts him in
his dressing room. When Zane's manager Scotty (Charles Matthau) goes to call security, Blair follows and strangles him.
Stepping up her campaign to win Zane, Blair attacks Holly, who refuses to speak to Zane when he visits her in the hospital. Blair then vandalizes his dressing room, kills a security guard there, and torches Zane's car. To make matters worse, Blair's angry husband Billy (Mark Duke Dalton) turns up
and attacks Zane. Finally, Blair kidnaps Holly, threatening to kill her if Zane doesn't meet her at the studio. Billy follows Zane there. During the resulting confrontation, a fire erupts, and Zane rescues Holly while Billy runs into the flames to save Blair. But Blair's body is never recovered,
and the threat of her presence haunts Zane during his subsequent wedding to Holly.
Despite the presence of a woman director, NUMBER ONE FAN is sexist in any number of ways. This is yet another film in which the male protagonist get to have his cake and eat it too, cheating on his loving girlfriend with a hot two-night stand yet remaining a blameless victim in the film's eyes
when the seductress won't let him go. And the male target audience is clearly supposed to lust for Blair as she bares her gorgeous body yet fear her predatory sexuality at the same time.
As a thriller, the film is both predictable and unconvincing, particularly when Blair kills Scotty and the night watchman, and nobody appears to notice their disappearance. Aside from the introduction of Billy, a character whose potential goes largely undeveloped, the story proceeds with barely a
hint of surprise. Indeed, considering its tacky exploitation of such stalking cases as the Rebecca Schaefer murder, the biggest mystery in this movie is why Paul Bartel, who directed and costarred with Schaefer in SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS, agreed to take part in it as an
actor. (Violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)
