Bloody Italian mayhem

I've been happily reading about old school horror movies on Wikipedia and IMDb. Yeah, that's the subject of the week.

So, whilst reading, it is fun to try to remember if I've seen a particular film or not. In this vein I ran across Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) and vaguely remembered watching I ages ago. The synopsis seemed okay and I found it on Youtube so why not? I'll tell you why not. The script and pacing is awful. And the acting is sadly subpar.

I can deal with the dubbing and the lack of lip sync, but it was atrocious enough for me to turn the movie off, and instead watch a vastly superior movie:

Stagefright (1987).

I had seen this ages ago during my late teens or early 20's. I remembered it vaguely, but boy, was I pleasantly surprised.

Stagefright is directed by Michele Soavi and was in fact his first full length film, and what a home-run! He cut his teeth under Italian Giallo master Dario Argento, and this debut shows he was paying attention.

In a nutshell, the story is this: A group of dancers are rehearsing for a show that's supposed to open in a week. One of the dancers (Alicia) has injured her ankle sneaks off with the wardrobe mistress during a break to see a doctor. The closest hospital happens to be a psychiatric facility, where a murderous madman, Irving Wallace sees Alicia. Unbeknownst to them he escapes and hides in their car. In no time at all, the wardrobe mistress is killed and the police is called. The director, Peter, colludes with the financier Ferrari (not the car) to retool the show to be about Wallace instead of a generic killer in an owl mask. In order to get the changes made, Peter arranges for most of the cast to be locked in the theater to rehearse the new script, and they are all trapped inside with the killer. Bloody mayhem ensues.

What we have here is a very intelligent horror movie. Everything that happens is setup right, nothing is left to chance. Plot devices that become important later are properly shown earlier. The actors do a credible job, even with the above mentioned dubbing. The music is aggressively 80's synth, which in my opinion works nicely, but hasn't aged terribly well.

For being an “80's slasher” Stagefright avoids most cliches or at least subverts them. There is no nudity just for the sake of it. One short flash in a scene where a dancer changes her costume is it, and it makes sense within the narrative. The killer kills because he wants to and that's it. No pointless moralizing. Soavi even plays with slasher tropes a bit just for fun but not so that it gets in the way.

In the way of nitpicks, a couple of the corpses are breathing if you look carefully, and I have no idea where he gets the pickaxe for the first murder from, but the biggest flaw is when,

SPOILER WARNING

a dancer is pulled through the floor. Her boyfriend and the director are both pulling on her arms for all they're worth while the killer somehow holds her down and manages to cut her in half. A chainsaw sound effect was accidentally left out, but still it's an impossible feat. Wallace is big but the two guys should have pulled him up with the girl.

SPOILER ENDS

Bottom line, Stagefright is a really good slasher style horror movie. If these films are your cup of tea, and you haven't seen it, you need to. It's as simple as that!

That's that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!