While a theatre troupe rehearses a new musical about a serial killer, real serial killer Irving Wallace is on the loose behind the scenes.
Dressed as the production’s antagonist, the Owl, Wallace resumes his bloody rampage.
Will cast and crew notice?
This movie has been on my radar for years. Every time I read any book or article about eighties horror, or Italian horror, Stage Fright was always highlighted as something special.
Stage Fright is the debut of Michael Soavi, a protege of Dario Argento who would go on to direct 1994’s cult classic Dellamorte Dellamore - The Cemetery Man.
Despite its origins, Stage Fright makes for a fascinating reaction to trends in international horror cinema.
It removes all of the mystery elements associated with giallo, feeling more like a stylish refinement of its American progeny, the slasher.
Unlike the complicated ‘follow a clue’ plotting of a lot of gialli, Stage Fright keeps its plot simple, with its characters trapped in a single location, and off-ed in various ways by a masked fiend.
There is nothing high minded to proceedings - the simple plot and cartoonishly selfish characters mean that none of it matters. This is cinematic grand guignol of the finest calibre.
The design of the killer is fantastically eerie - wearing a giant bird’s head, he is a unique and unsettling figure.
Soavi’s style owes a lot to Argento, although the prowling camera, slow motion and exaggerated angles owe as much to MTV as the Italian horror maestro.
The play-with-in-a-movie is bizarre, the score can be a tad obtrusive and the bumbling cops outside the theatre are a comedic failure. But none of these things are deficits - they add to the surreal vibe of Soavi’s pop nightmare.
And at less than 90 minutes, Stage Fright never slows down enough to get hung up on, well, anything.
A late gem from the Italian horror scene, Stage Fright is stylishly bloody fun.
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