"The Fan" was directed by Tony Scott, a Brit with no interest in exploring the symbiotic relationship between fan and sport. The movie is a slasher cartoon, thanks largely to De Niro's laughably gory activities, and it's both the bloodiest and least scary obsessive fan movie. For a far more nuanced and altogether worthwhile portrait of demented sports fandom, look for "The Wrestler" writer Robert Siegel's directorial debut "Big Fan" when it receives a limited theatrical release on August 28. Patton Oswalt plays a New York Giants supporter who, after a chance encounter with his favorite player, is forced to reevaluate a life spent in the team's service. Oswalt's Paul Aufiero looks an awful lot like Rupert Pupkin, right down to the mother yelling at him from off-camera, but Siegel's script is one of the most thoughtful and original on this subject to date, scraping the typical histrionics for more nuanced introspection. The places Aufiero's character goes will surprise even the most knowledgeable observer of the genre.

"Tony Manero" surprised me, too. Its Raúl is a man after Rupert Pupkin's heart, seeking to remake himself in his cherished icon's image. Like Annie Wilkes, he feels singular ownership over the thing he lusts after and feels no compunction in doing unsavory acts to prove it. But John Travolta is a continent away from Raúl, who lives in Chile in 1978 during the Pinochet dictatorship, and he has no plans to kidnap him or replace him. Interestingly, Travolta himself holds no appeal for Raúl; when the local theater replaces "Saturday Night Fever" with "Grease," he's outraged. Like Annie before him, Raúl has no interest in his hero's other work: just as she giddily destroys Paul's first non-Misery novel, Raúl tries to erase the blot of "Grease" from Travolta's record. He doesn't want to care about Travolta. It's Tony Manero he loves.

Director Pablo Larrain's vision of fan obsession is particularly upsetting for a few reasons. First, unlike the majority of its antecedents, its violence is not confined to the rich and famous and their associates; Raúl’s victims are ordinary, innocent citizens unlucky enough to cross his path. He kills indiscriminately and unthinkingly in order to keep his dream of disco dancing on TV alive. Movies like "Misery" or "The Fan" build dread little by little; in "Tony Manero," the brutality is sudden. It's not that Raúl kills people, but that he does it so callously. The Bee Gees' signature "Saturday Night Fever" track, "Stayin' Alive," does not appear in "Tony Manero," and with very good reason: in this context, it'd be wildly inappropriate.

For director Pablo Larrain, "Tony Manero" is about how a foreign culture can pollute national ideas. In the press notes, he says "The film is an exploration of the [false] belief that a culture can achieve happiness, success or achievement by imitating a foreign culture... with this story, I intended to take a harsh look at... a society whose hands are covered in blood but that tries to look stylish and trendy, dancing under flashy lights while ignoring others' suffering." Where the other films of the obsessive fan place the blame squarely on the sociopath, "Tony Manero" holds Tony Manero -- and by extension, American culture -- at least partly responsible for Raúl’s crimes. And this is the other thing that makes "Tony Manero" so exceptionally scary: What if Larrain's right?

[Additional photos: Jessica Walter and Clint Eastwood in "Play Misty for Me," Universal Pictures, 1971; Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis in "The King of Comedy," 20th Century Fox, 1982; Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes in "The Fan," TriStar, 1996; Alfredo Castro in "Tony Manero," Lorber HT Digital, 2009]