Reaction & Review | Stage Fright

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering an Italian slasher film from 1987. That movie is "Stage Fright".

Now I'm gonna be honest with you, guys, I didn't know anything about this movie up until about several days ago when I stumbled upon it at one of my local video stores, and decided to buy a copy of it on a whim. See, I read what was written on the back of the DVD case, and it sounded kinda fascinating to me. Basically, it's about a group of actors rehearsing for a musical about a mass murderer. And while all of this is happening, some murderous psychopath escapes from an insane asylum, and somehow ends up locked up with these actors overnight, who I'm going to assume are still rehearsing their musical.

Now admittedly, when I read the first part of this movie's plot summary, about how an insane psychopath has escaped an insane asylum, it reminded me of the time that I watched "Garden Tool Massacre". Because that was also the same place the killer from that movie escaped from. And I should mention for anyone who never read my review for that movie, "Garden Tool Massacre" was ungodly bad for so many reasons. If you honestly want to know what, you can my review for that movie somewhere in my season 2 file on my DA page.

But getting back to this movie, as interesting as the plot sounded, what really drew my interest to it was a blurb I caught right at the top of the back of the DVD case. It's from Tomb of DVD, and it simply says "One of the greatest Italian (or anywhere for that matter) slasher films!". Not totally sure why they needed to include the word Italian in there, but anyway, I read that blurb and I see that as a challenge. Because while I haven't seen a whole lot of slasher films, I can say that most of them ranged from being decent to being absolutely terrible. So this film has some REALLY big shoes to fill if it wants to be claimed as one of the greatest slasher films ever made.

One more thing I want to quickly mention, before I delve into this movie, is the film's director, Michele Saovi. I should that note that his first named is pronounced as "Michael", just in case anyone gets confused about the man's first name. But anyway, I was checking through this director's filmography. And while there are a lot of films of his that I haven't seen, there was one movie that he had an attachment to, and it's a movie that...I wasn't very happy with. That movie was "2020: Texas Gladiators". In case you're not familiar, that was one of the very earliest films I had ever reviewed for this series. It was probably my 4th episode ever, but I'm not totally sure on that. Anyway, to make a long story short, that film was absolute garbage from almost every conceivable level.

Now I'm not gonna necessarily hold that against this Saovi, because he was only credited as either a second unit director or assistant. I really want to see what he can do when he has full creative control over a film like this. I'm hoping for this movie to be pretty good, but I can also see this thing going way off the fucking rails here and be a massive turd. I'm hoping that it isn't, but there's only way to find out. And the only way I am gonna find out whether or not this thing is any good, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Stage Fright".

5 minutes later

So, this director's musical is about his female lead getting revenge against her rapist, who's also wearing an owl mask I should mention, by essentially raping him in return...OK. Not totally sure how that makes any logical sense, but I can at least say that it is sort of creative.

14 minutes later

So our psychopathic killer was hiding in Betty's car after they left the medical institution. I'm wondering how the hell he even managed to escape without anyone noticing that he left his cell after he killed one of the workers there. And somehow, I don't think this movie is gonna give out any sort of explanation for that. Granted, I understand that it's a very trivial thing to be complaining about, but it still does leave me curious here.

20 minutes later

All right, I have a question, and it's kind of a serious one. So earlier in the film, Betty's murder was reported by the police from her best friend, Alicia. And the police said that they looked all over the place for where the murderer could be, even inside the theater. And Alicia just discovered the key to the theater has gone missing. So my question is where the hell was the killer hiding this entire time?! My only guess is the dressing room, though that's just purely conjecture, since we only saw someone's shadow approaching the changing room that one of our female characters was in, so it could've been ANYBODY for all we know. Guys, I understand that I'm probably putting too much thought into this, but it's beginning to bug me a little bit.

12 minutes later

O...K, well, I certainly wasn't expecting our killer to use a power drill through the door to kill the guy that he's currently strangling. That was seriously an awesome-looking kill, guys. I gotta the movie props, there.

7 minutes later

And somehow, half of this chick's body was cut in half after she was almost pulled down by our killer. I'm wondering how the hell this killer was able to even manage that kind of feat, considering that he was hiding in complete darkness while doing this? I'm hoping that we get an explanation for that at some point. Otherwise, I'm gonna be a bit disappointed.

30 seconds later

OK...well, it seems like I just got my answer already. Apparently, our killer had a fucking chainsaw of all things, as he's using it to gut this guy's body with it! You know what? That is a perfectly reasonable explanation, and I'm totally cool with it.

8 minutes later

I'd like to say right now, guys, that I'm beginning to despise these fucking cops. Every single time that this movies cuts to these cops makes me wish these two were also locked in with our killer, because they have served NO purpose to this film whatsoever! That's how much I really despise them.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "Stage Fright". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. Well, I may as well start with this. When I initially went into this movie, I had one of two predictions in mind. It was either gonna be one of the tamest slashers films I had ever seen, or it was going to be one of those over-hyped pieces of shit that was totally going to suck, because I read the blurb on the DVD case, and it was not actually going to live to being one of the best slasher films ever. Well, after finishing this movie for myself, I am gonna say that...I was pleasantly surprised here. I really wasn't expecting much from this thing at all, but it actually wound up being pretty good. Mind you now, the movie does have a couple of issues, but for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised by my experience with this movie.

So with that being said, let's start this review off by talking about the writing. Writing here, for the most part, is pretty solid. That being said, the pacing is a little bit of a disrupter here. To start with, our kills are sort of spaced out. We don't get our first kill until a little bit over 20 minutes into the movie. And then about the same time later, we don't get another kill until after our performers, along with the director and investor, are locked in with our killer, Irving Wallace, inside the theater. But shortly after that second kill happens, the kills start to become more frequent, and the movie mostly flows at an even pace after that. So the first 40 minutes are kinda slow to start with. Some of it is trying to build up our story, while some of it is just padding. Now in most cases, I would say that when you have that kind of slow boil with your movie, it would sometimes lead into your movie having a bit of a serious pacing issue, because you want to see things moving at an even pace. Thankfully, I can say that, even with the first 40 minutes being a little bit slow, most of the rest of the movie flows very well., which leads into the awesome kills. However, I'll get into all that when I cover special effects.

Our characters here are, admittedly, not all that interesting. The only three I can mention by name are Alicia, who is our main character, Peter, who is the director of the musical, and our killer, Irving Wallace. Everyone else I can write off as just killing fodder, because a lot of these characters don't have a whole lot of depth. Which makes sense, because as a slasher film, you're here to see most of these characters get killed off in the most gruesome ways. As for the ones I did mention a moment ago, Alicia, is our main character, and the only things I can remember about her is that she sprained her ankle while rehearsing, and so she secretly goes with Betty to a medical institution to try and get it fixed, only to end up getting fired by the director later for sneaking out. Speaking of which, our director, Peter, is a demanding director that is responsible for his musical about a serial killer that rapes his victims. He actually ends up changing it a bit after the first actual kill happens, from changing the killer in his musical from being anonymous to the name Irving Wallace, who doesn't know at the time that the real Irving Wallace is locked with them in the theater. And honestly, it does make Peter one of the more interesting characters up to that point, since he's the only one of our heroes who has any sort of depth worth mentioning.

And as for our killer, Irving Wallace, it's a bit of a mixed bag with him. You see, the only thing we really know about him is that he was a former actor that ended up killing 16 people before finally being taken away by the police, and most likely ended up at a medical institution in the process. I should clarify and state that the 16 people he killed was supposedly a rumor, according to one of the doctors that was treating Alicia. So I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that actually happened. One other thing I should mention about Irving is that he is a silent killer in this movie, so he basically has no dialogue to work with. And honestly, it totally works. Especially towards the end at one point, where he has all of his victims in place on stage, and you just see him sitting there with the owl mask still over his face, along with the cat that also hangs around this movie at certain moments. It looks really cool, and it makes his character really stand out the most. Granted, he doesn't have any real connection with any of our characters, outside of the fact that he's a former actor. But still, what little we do know about him is FAR more depth than I can give credit to, unlike another movie I reviewed earlier this year called "Hell Fest", where it also had a silent killer that had no name and simply killed because fuck you, that is why.

There is one more set of characters that I would like to make mention of, and those would be our two worthless cops for this movie. Now as I mentioned earlier, after Alicia finds her friend Betty murdered, she and the rest of the people at the theater report the incident to the police. And the police chief says to the director that they'll leave one police car behind, just so they could keep an eye on the killer in case he decides to come back to the theater. Now that part in itself makes perfect sense. It would've been better if one of these cops actually DID something of value, like, say, one of them goes to check up on everyone inside the theater just to see if everything is OK, only to find out that the door is locked and they can't get in, so they would logically have to get off their asses and actually do something from there, right? Well...no. Not even remotely close. If you ever wanted to see pointless characters in your movie, you would find these two in a fucking dictionary of pointlessness. These two cops do nothing in this movie, other than cracking jokes, or just doing nothing of value. I'm going to assume that these two were suppose to serve as some sort of comic relief. And if that IS the case, then these two cops are the death of comedy. Their jokes are shit, and they have nothing to add to the overall story. You could cut these two out of the movie entirely and you would not miss a thing. They're only in the movie for about a combined total of around 2 minutes, but that's honestly 2 minutes too long to dedicate it to these asshats called cops, and it makes me wish there was an editor on hand to cut these scenes out entirely, and the rest of the movie would've flowed a bit better.

Now beyond that, the rest of the writing here is still pretty good. It does have a couple of issues when it comes to the characters and the pacing, but most of that can be easily overlooked, unless if you have some higher standard for pacing in your movies. Like I said, the first 40 minutes are somewhat slow, but if you can overlook that part, then the rest of the movie is a surprisingly good slasher flick. Now as for the acting, most of it is OK. I did notice, though, that some of the acting was dubbed in. Which makes sense, considering that this movie was made in Italy, and it's very well possible that some of the actors in this movie did not speak proper English, so they had to hire actors outside of the country to dub in their lines. And that was a common thing back during the days when Spaghetti Westerns were mostly filmed in Europe. Not sure how common that is for today's standards, but I'm not gonna get into all that. I should just solely focus on the acting for this movie. And like I said, most of the acting here is OK for what it is, and the dubbing is not too bad either. There were several actors who either hammed it up or tried to shout their lines a bit. I could recall Alicia's actor having to do that at certain points, and there were a couple of actresses who also sorta hammed it up as well. But outside of that, the acting here is all right. It's not great, obviously, but none of it is downright horrible either. It's just something that you have to take for what it is.

Now let's get into the special effects, and THIS is where the movie truly shines. The blood effects here are great in it's practical form. The gore effects, what little I did notice, are also really good. Our kills here are also really fucking cool, too. The best kill, by far, would have to go to the power drill that I mentioned earlier. That, to me, was probably one of the more creative kills I have seen in a long time. Second place would have to go to the chainsaw kill because, well...it's a fucking chainsaw. And 9 times out of 10, those sorts of kills are usually really awesome. Which explains why I can't put it above the power drill kill, because those kills are somewhat more common in slasher films. But anyway, guys, it's been a long time since I covered any movie that had really good blood effects. Looking at the budget, it seems to have been made for about a million dollars. And they took that rather low budget and made it work to it's advantage. Our costuming here is pretty good for all of our stage actors, and the owl mask on our killer also looks pretty awesome, too. And our primary set for the musical looks really good, as well. So yeah, I can definitely say the special effects, and everything surrounding it look really good.

Camerawork here is also really good. The lighting here is lit perfectly fine. The sound-mix is mixed very well. And our score is pretty good, too. Granted, most of it is synth music, but compared to a modern horror movie's score, where it sounds unneeded and generic, this score is actually pretty decent. None of it is amazing, mind you, but it's still pretty good for what it is.

Ultimately, guys, when everything is said and done, am I able to recommend "Stage Fright"? Yes, I actually can. This is one of the better slasher films I have seen in a long time. While I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to say that it is one of the best slasher films ever made, it certainly does make a strong case for it. If you are a horror fanatic, and you haven't had a chance to see this thing yet, go ahead and check it out. I don't know if this thing is up on YouTube or any other social media site where you can watch it, but if you can find it, give it a watch for yourself. Or if you can find it on DVD or Blu-ray, go ahead and pick it up, as long as it's for a reasonable price. For myself, I bought it around $10. And that, to me, is perfectly fine, as long as it's within that price range. Anything higher than that, then probably not. I don't know if it would be worth anything higher than $10, but if you feel that it's worth picking up at higher price, then you can go right ahead and buy it. This movie definitely surprised me a bit by being pretty good. So, I'm probably gonna end up holding onto this movie for my DVD collection, and to have something I could possibly watch every year around the Halloween season. Now, I think I'm in the mood for another horror film. And I think I'm gonna go and watch..."Chopping Mall". I've grown to love that movie every time I watch it, so I'm gonna go and do that next after I get done putting this review together.

And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.