Unclean & Unseen! – STAGE FRIGHT (1987)

Giving us one of the few examples where the tribute outshines its source material, STAGE FRIGHT is what happens when you take an overused pile of slasher tropes and twist them into a genius-by-accident performance-within-a-performance.

STAGE FRIGHT is the feature debut of director Michele Soavi. You know Soavi–he’s that guy in CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD who watched his girlfriend puke up her digestive tract! Barely 30 years old at the time, Soavi proved here that he was paying very close attention when served as second assistant director on Dario Argento’s TENEBRAE (1982).

A clutch of theatre kids rehearsing an avant-garde production about a masked murder turn out to be the most unlucky sons of bitches in history when they all begin to get graphically bumped off by an actual serial killer who’s recently escaped from the loony bin. Suiting his slasher in a gigantic owl mask, Soavi wastes no time chopping, drilling, and pickaxing his principals with great flair. Mercifully, the film isn’t “arty” simply to align with its theatrical conceit. Soavi just has a great eye for this kind of thing, efficiently balancing black comedy, bitchy dialogue, and a putrid array of hardcore gore with something close to ‘aplomb’. The rest of these sordid details were handled by producer Joe D’Amato (born Aristide Massaccesi), famous for churning out a staggering amount of popular porn, exploitation, and horror titles, particularly during the VHS era.

I have no idea why the film needs such head-scratching alternate titles such as DELIRIA (okay), BLOODY BIRD (meh) and AQUARIUS (wha’?!), but I’m going on record with a bold statement here: STAGE FRIGHT outpaces in most every way Argento’s own OPERA, yet another theatrical-themed slasher released just four months later. Sure, the young Soavi doesn’t have eye needles or that jaw-dropping bullet-through-the-peephole sequence, but what he lacks in balletic refinery, he more than makes up for in gory chutzpah. (I’ve been dying to work that word into one of these posts.)

It’s not perfect, but no classic slasher fan should be without STAGE FRIGHT. Hell, I still have my VHS copy more than 30 years later. Nice blu-ray releases abound these days, so hop to it–it’s a hoot!

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