StageFright (1987)


Michele Soavi was one of the last Italian directors of note when it came to the traditional gialli and off-the-wall horror films that his home country was known for throughout the 1970s and 1980s.  Often working with Dario Argento and others, he carved his own niche, including the strange artsy zombie comedy cult classic, Cemetery Man.  Long before that he made his feature debut with a surprisingly straightforward slasher film called Deliria, also known as StageFright, among several other names, in the U.S.

Peter (David Brandon) is a tyrannical stage director putting on a musical he wrote involving a killer wearing an owl's head.  One of his actresses, Alicia (Barbara Cupisti), hurts her ankle during a routine.  Since Peter won't let anyone leave during rehearsal she gets her friend Betty (Ulrike Schwerk) to sneak her out to the hospital.  However, the only one nearby is an insane asylum, where they happen to be housing an insane actor named Irving Wallace (Clain Parker), who is awaiting trial on several murders.

Wallace frees himself and, unbeknownst to Betty and Alicia, hitches a ride back to the theater, where Wallace kills Betty.  Peter, hoping to cash in on the death by opening the show earlier and making it about Wallace, decides to lock everyone in to force rehearsals.  However, Wallace is in the building and has decided he is going to do his own show. 

There are a number of quirks, but for the most part this is a typical slasher with Alicia as the final girl, just without a lot of the "dying if one has sex" trope.  It is also beautifully filmed, as the one thing Soavi did get from Argento was an amazing sense of style, although I would say he shows influences that range from Hitchcock to Fulci.  The problem is that, unlike most of his movies which tend to lose themselves with the visuals and leave the plot behind, this one being so linear makes it drag in a number of places.  The acting, and the dubbing, isn't too good, and none of the characters except Alicia are around long enough for there to be an emotional attachment.

This pretty much stops mattering once it is just Wallace and Alicia left, which is a good portion of the last third of the movie.  This is done with little dialog and much atmosphere as she desperately searches for the key so that she can get out of the building.  It does have a bit of a surprise ending, since a movie like this depends on them, as well as a bit of the tongue-in-cheek attitude Soavi would bring as his career went on and he abandoned horror to direct for television while doing the occasional drama film.

StageFright (1987)
Time: 90 minutes
Starring: Barbara Cupisti, David Brandon, Clain Parker
Director: Michele Soavi



 

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