Stage Fright (1987)

... aka: Aquarius
... aka: Bloody Bird
... aka: Deliria
... aka: Sound Stage Massacre
... aka: StageFright: Aquarius
... aka: StageFright: Theater des Todes
... aka: Théâtre de la peur, Le (Theater of Death)

Directed by:
"Michael" (Michele) Soavi

The same year he was second unit director on Dario Argento's similarly-themed OPERA (1987), Michele Soavi made his own stage theater-set slasher flick called Deliria. For the American release it was re-titled Stage Fright, which caused a little confusion with another 80s slasher flick with a theater setting from Australia called Nightmares (1980), which had also been issued on VHS as STAGE FRIGHT. Regardless of what title people saw it under (Aquarius, The Bloody Bird and Sound Stage Massacre were just a few of the other titles), it was the film that put the director on the radar of horror fans worldwide. Prior to this, he'd been mentored by a whole host of notable Italian horror / exploitation filmmakers; serving as an actor, writer and / or assistant director on films made by Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci, Joe D'Amato and others. It was the Argento connection though that echoed strongest; the two men had worked on over half-a-dozen projects throughout the 80s, and inevitable comparisons were drawn between Soavi's visual style and Argento's. Argento however was not at all involved in the production of Soavi's feature film debut. He'd actually been recommended for this job by D'Amato, who also produced the film. The screenplay was from "Lew Cooper;" an alias for sometimes actor / sometimes writer George Eastman, who's probably best known to horror buffs for playing the cannibal-killer in THE GRIM REAPER (1980); another D'Amato film.

The action centers around a minor stage production at a small theater called "The Night Owl," which is being put together by director Peter Connors (David Brandon). Peter is desperate for a hit (and money) and has concocted a "controversial" story line about a killer in a giant owl headdress who is raped by one of his resurrected female victims. He's also a pretentious prick who constantly screams at and berates his cast and crew and demands more "Sex... S-E-X!" from his nubile lead actress Alicia (Barbara Cupisti), who's at her wit's end with him. Other expected theater types are around, including sleazy / pushy producer Ferrari (Piero Vida), backstabbing diva Laurel (Mary Sellers), Peter's harried assistant Mark (Martin Philips), bitchy queen Brett ("John Morghen" / Giovanni Lombardo Radice), dancer Corinne ("Lori Parrel" / Loredana Parrella) and Sybil (Jo Ann Smith) and Danny (Robert Gligorov), a couple of actors dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. After Alicia injures her ankle, she and wardrobe mistress Betty (Ulrike Schwerk) sneak off to the nearest hospital to get it treated. They end up at a mental asylum instead, where psycho Irving Wallace (Clain Parker), who murdered sixteen people and chopped them up into little pieces, is being temporarily housed. Irving manages to kill an orderly, escapes the building and hides out in the backseat of Betty's car when they head back to the theater.

Not long after they return, Betty is found outside with a pick-axe through her head. The police are called in to investigate but there's no trace of the killer anywhere, so the show must go on. Peter decides to make some alterations to their play to cash in on the publicity of both the escaped murderer and Betty's murder, and rushes to get it all started. With a few police officers (played by Mickey Knox and the director) stationed outside just in case, Peter organizes an over-night practice session with his chief cast and crew. Naturally, the killer hasn't really gone anywhere and is just hiding out inside the theaters waiting to strike. He murders the guy playing the killer in the play, steals his owl mask and then begins bumping everyone off one by one. No one can get out of the building because there's just one exit (gee, talk about your fire hazards); an impenetrable steel door that can only be opened by a key that has turned up missing.

Though the film has its fans, and its moments, overall it's mostly just an average, watchable, unexceptional film in its category. For the entire first hour we're treated to little of interest: the plot is ordinary, the dialogue is terrible, the characters are annoying / unlikable stereotypes (not helped any by the awful English dubbing) and the whole thing plays out in an extremely predictable fashion. There's a great music score (from Simon Boswell), decent cinematography and art direction and some blood to help us along, though. Numerous victims are stabbed, a few are axed, an eyeball gets gouged, an arm and head get chopped off, a body is sawed in half, someone is set on fire and, since the theater also happens to have a woodworking shop inside, the killer even manages to get his hands on an electric drill and a chainsaw. Once everyone but our heroine is killed off, the film begins to improve significantly, with nicely stylized and composed shots and some suspenseful cat-and-mouse moments. Particularly good is a sequence where our heroine is under the stage trying to quietly retrieve a key wedged in a crack while the killer sits in a chair right above her with the theater's feline mascot Lucifer sitting on his lap.

Other scenes in the final half hour are lessened somewhat by idiocy. A good example is when the killer corners Alicia up on some scaffolding, gets knocks off and is left dangling from a wire and trying to climb back up. Our heroine, who has an axe in her hands, frantically begins chopping the wire when she could just as easily chop him and end it all. After the killer falls, she just drops the axe for no reason and walks back down to where the psycho is,  completely unarmed. A final "shock" scene was also grafted on at the very end that's really lame.

Though Stage Fright cost less than a million dollars to make, it was a theatrical flop in Italy. Here in the U.S. it received a very limited big screen release in 1989 before being issued to VHS later that same year by Imperial Entertainment. Anchor Bay was the first to get it out onto DVD and it has since been released on numerous other labels. Soavi went on to make La chiesa / The Church (1989), La setta / "The Sect" (1991; U.S. title = The Devil's Daughter) and the cult favorite Cemetery Man (1994), but has since pretty much bowed out of the horror genre. He even passed up the opportunity to direct From Dusk Till Dawn in 1995 during his hiatus and now mostly directs Italian TV movies.

★★1/2

"Brivido giallo" - Per sempre (1987)

... aka: Changeling 2: The Return, The
... aka: Changeling 2: The Revenge
... aka: Fino alla morte
... aka: Per sempre (Forever)
... aka: Until Death

Directed by:
Lamberto Bava

Brivido Giallo was a 1986 cable TV series featuring four movies; all running about 90 minutes, all directed by Lamberto Bava, all co-written by the prolific Dardano Sacchetti and all boasting a score by Simon Boswell. Per sempre / "Forever" was the second of these aired; following right behind the so-so Una notte al cimitero / "A Night in the Cemetery" (U.S. title = GRAVEYARD DISTURBANCE). The third and fourth entries were La casa dell'orco / "The House of the Ogre" (U.S. title = The Ogre) and "A cena col vampio" / Dinner with a Vampire. Of these four, The Ogre was the only one to receive decent distribution here in America after it was misleadingly re-titled Demons III to be sold as the third entry in Bava's extremely popular Demons series. Per sempre itself was also the subject of a bogus re-titling and was released on VHS in some countries (though not America) as either The Changeling 2: The Return or Changeling 2: The Revenge as a fake follow-up to the very good 1980 Canadian ghost story starring George C. Scott.

Lovers Carlo (David Brandon) and Linda (Gioia Scola) murder her husband Luca (Roberto Pedicini) and bury his body in a shallow grave in the woods. Six years pass and the duo now run a restaurant in the small fishing village of Carabinieri where the customers seem more interested in checking out the sexy Linda than eating the food. Linda's lonely, neglected young son Alex (Marco Vivio), whom she conceived with her deceased former husband, is scared of the dark and plagued by nightmares of his dead father emerging from his grave. Carlo has since turned bitter and angry over the years and not only detests the little boy but is also abusive in numerous ways toward Linda. Late one night during a thunderstorm, a mysterious, hunky drifter named Marco (Demons star Urbano Barberini) appears at the doorstep looking for food, clothing, lodging and a job. Since Marco is kind to Alex and Linda needs a hand around the restaurant anyway, they hire him on and soon come to realize that he may be more than he seems.

Marco is amiable, charming, friendly and good-looking, but he also seems to know a lot of things he shouldn't know, like secret ingredients that go into Linda's food and where clothing that belonged to Luca is stored. Once he starts cooking in the restaurant, business picks up and customers begin commenting about the food tasting as good as it did before Luca vanished. Carlo quickly becomes jealous and paranoid of the new man in town. He wonders why Marco disappears for hours each day, whether or not Linda is sleeping with him and how he seems to know his way around the establishment so well. He then begins to fear that he's actually an undercover policeman investigating the dead husband's disappearance after he catches him having a discussion with the town's marshal (Stefano De Sando). Soon, things buried in the husband's grave - including a wedding ring with "Per sempre" inscribed inside - begin turning up inside the home. The son continues to have nightmares, dead pigeons fill the attic, fresh meat spoils and maggots show up all over the place. Just who or what is Marco and what does he want to accomplish?

Though unoriginal and somewhat predictable, this is a passable and fairly well-made thriller with some colorful visual style; particularly striking during various red-filtered shots of the lake and handsomely shot blue-tinted night scenes. However, it also clearly owes a huge debt of gratitude to Tay Garnett's torrid 1946 crime melodrama The Postman Always Rings Twice (an adaptation of James M. Cain's novel, which was remade in 1981 starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange), and lifts its basic plot and three main characters from that film. Given the overheated story line and sexy leads, this actually would have benefited from being steamier and more (sexually) graphic than it actually is and seems a little too chaste in a PG-13 kind of way. Adding a horror twist to the premise are the possibility of Marco being either a ghost or possessed by the wrong husband's spirit and the child's frequent nightmares about his dead, zombie-like father being fished out of the lake, reaching his hand out of the ground and grabbing his leg and busting through the plaster walls of his bedroom.

As an interesting footnote, Lucio Fulci claimed in interviews to have actually written the original story this was based upon and also said he was originally supposed to direct it, but it was taken from him and copyrighted behind his back by credited writer Sacchetti. Sacchetti, on the other hand, claimed in interviews to have actually written the story (for the record, his wife - Elisa Briganti - is credited as co-writer) and says Fulci was lying about all that; sour grapes over the project going to Lamberto Bava instead. Either way, the film effectively ended future collaborations between the two men.

In 2009, MYA Communications released this and the other two previously-unseen-in-America Brivido Giallo titles. (The Ogre had already been issued in 2003 by Shriek Show.)

★★1/2