Byron Orlok, Boris Karloff an aging, embittered horror movie star, abruptly declares he will retire from Hollywood and return to his native England to live out his final days. He believes the old-fashioned shocks he thrives on are outdated, insisting that real-life news stories are far more terrifying than anything he ever conjured on screen. Yet, after a long stretch of convincing from a young director named Sammy Michaels, Peter Bogdanovich, Orlok consents to one last in-person promotional appearance at a Reseda drive-in before leaving Hollywood for good.
Meanwhile, Bobby Thompson, a quiet, clean-cut insurance agent living in the suburban San Fernando Valley with his wife and aging parents, harbors a dark preoccupation that goes well beyond his day job. He is an obsessive gun collector, a detail his family mostly overlooks as they go about their routines. On a morning that begins like any other, tragedy erupts: after his father heads off to work, Thompson murders his wife, his mother, and a grocery delivery boy inside their home. The violence doesn’t end there. That afternoon, Thompson continues his rampage, methodically shooting people as they ride in cars along the busy freeway, perched atop an oil storage tank that looms over the roadway. An employee who comes to investigate the gunfire is shot as well, and the killer leaves behind a disturbing trail of weapons and ammunition at the crime scene.
With the rampage still unfolding, Thompson heads toward the very drive-in where Orlok will soon appear. As dusk falls, he climbs into the tower within the screen frame, choosing the lofty perch to exact his last, terrifying act. The Orlok film is projected onto the large screen behind him, and Thompson begins firing at patrons in the parking area, turning the night into chaos. The theater’s operations are disrupted as the murder spree escalates—Thompson even shoots Orlok’s secretary, Jenny, during the chaos, injuring her and forcing a confrontation between the aging star and the killer.
Orlok, facing the immediate threat in front of him and the surreal image of his own film playing behind Thompson, steps forward with surprising composure. He confronts the gunman, and the two become locked in a strange duel where reality and cinema blur. Thompson, disoriented by the simultaneous sight of the man before him and the iconic image on the screen, finds himself deftly disarmed by Orlok’s walking cane. In a moment charged with dread and lingering fear, Orlok looks at the defeated assailant and asks, Is that what I was afraid of? The crisis culminates as police officers arrive to arrest Thompson for the murders he has committed, and as he is led away, he delivers a chilling, satisfied line about his near-perfect marksmanship: that he “hardly ever missed.”
