In Bob Fosse’s final film,“Star 80,” this collective male hatred could easily double as a thesis. For Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten, it was a stalwart fact of her existence. The powerful, trusted men who steered the course of her life also failed to prevent her violent murder at the hands of her estranged husband.

The film follows Dorothy as she rises to fame as a centerfold, only to be shot and killed at the age of twenty. Her husband, Paul Snider, then violated her body before turning his gun on himself. Fosse’s work often veers into dark territory, but rarely with as serious an eye as it does in this 1983 film. Addiction, racism, disease and death all feature heavily in his vision, from “Lenny” to “All that Jazz.” But prior to “Star 80,” taboo subjects had a degree of decadent charm for the director.

This is not the case with his final film. “Star 80” is far from genre material, though the true story it’s based on is the stuff of demented horror. Instead, it’s a terrifying and genre-less descent into the red mist of misogyny. Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece of investigative journalism, Fosse traces the behavior of the men—a small-time hustler, a magazine magnate, and a movie director—who tried at every turn to market, control, and possess Dorothy for their own ends. And while it may not be a horror movie, it’s no great stretch to say that “Star 80” is one of the scariest films of its decade.

Mariel Hemingway, with her fulsome, apple-cheeked beauty, is a dead ringer for the real Dorothy. Breezy and pure as the driven snow, the blonde teenager is more Seventeen Magazine than centerfold material. But she is slowly "liberated" by a persistent, ingratiating older boyfriend, played by a mustachioed Eric Roberts. Dorothy is first approached by Paul Snider in the Dairy Queen where she works after school. Inhabited by Roberts with the shifty, restless neurosis of a used car salesman—or, indeed, a small-time pimp—Paul is instantly infatuated, working to impress Dorothy and her family with his faux-sophistication. Against her mother’s wishes, he eventually whisks her off to Los Angeles to become a model.

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