StageFright (1987)

Michele Soavi's debute film was this wonderful Italian horror film that's simply one of the best slasher films ever made!

Cast and crew of a stage production find themselves locked inside their theater with an escaped homicidal maniac!

Stylish and colorful direction highlight this excellent giallo film. Soavi makes the most of his clever cinematic techniques with inventive camera work and nice set pieces. Soavi has obviously taken a page from director Dario Argento in his artsy directorial style. He turns the dank catacombs of the theater into a dark, shadowy playground for our killer, who wears a truly spooky owl's head. Soavi sets up an atmosphere of great tension, setting the occurrences during a thunderstorm, using great re-occurring imagery and making even the huge theater a claustrophobic trap for our cast. There's some great moments of smart suspense as well, like the sequence with Alicia under the stage.

Being a giallo film, there's a lot of bloody scenery to be had. There's plenty of vicious, memorable murder sequences that will please any gore-hound to no end!

The cast is pretty good, even if they are dubbed something fierce. Barbara Cupisti is fetching as the films leading lady. The film boasts a weird and beautiful rock score that has a awesome contrast with the films visuals.

All in all, Stage Fright aka Deliria is a top-notch film that's a true must-see for horror fans everywhere!

*** 1/2 out of ****

Fmovies: Stageright is possibly one of the greatest slasher/horror films virtually no one has ever seen, which is why I so strongly reccomend you do some searching for a copy. Stagefright tells a simplistic tale (one which verges on cliche, but fortunately manages to avoid the pratfalls of the formulaic slasher film) of a group of thespians whom are currently working on a theatrical production, a musical about a serial murderer. As this occurs, so does the escape of a crazed actor/murderer from the local insane asylum whom happened to brutally kill his co-star several years back in the same theater. He returns to wreak his vengeance upon the cavernous rehearsal hall's new inhabitants, donning an owl mask and weilding a variety of lethal impliments of destruction.

As you can see, there really isn't much to Stagefright in terms of plot, but this aspect does not work against Stagefright, it proves to be an asset. Due to the lack of contrived subplots and red herrings, director Michele Soavi (this film was his debut, proving just how strong of a director he is) can concentrate on the magnificent atmosphere and carnage that ensues. Speaking of carnage, Stagefright not only offers some marvelous suspense/tension , but some great gore. The score only helps to accenutate the mood of the movie and while the characters may be two-dimensional, the aformentioned aspects of Stagefright surpass them. Stagefright is recommended definitively.

Grade: A

Four films might be too little to judge, but I think Michele Soavi is the best Italian horror director since Mario Bava. Regarding several aspects, his visions and attitude surpass those of praised directors like Lamberto Bava, Umberto Lenzi and even Dario Argento. Stagefright has got a simple plot (much simpler that those in Soavi's later movies) but that makes it all the more accessible and enjoyable. The plot involves an escaped lunatic who stumbles into a theater where a group is rehearsing an artistic play. The mentally weak man, unable to separate reality from his own demented imagination, considers himself to be at home and violently begins to annihilate cast and crew. Even though the premise is perfect for sinking low in gore slashing, Soavi prefers to focus on creating tense situations and making you feel one with the characters and – as a result of this – petrified as well. The stylishly filmed sets and efficient scenery makes it feel like you're watching a more sophisticated version of Bava's "Demons". This is exactly what makes him such a brilliant director! Give him little and he still manages to deliver a fully equipped horror film. Call me nuts, but I think there are directors who actually have the talent to make violence look like art…and Soavi definitely is one of them. Stagefright has a terrific musical score and a few familiar faces in the cast. Most memorable appearance unquestionably is made by Giovanni Lombardo Radice. This Italian cult actor appears in multiple gore highlights and practically always comes to a horrible end… Stagefright comes with the highest possible recommendation. In case you dug this film, you're ready for Soavi's "the Sect" and "Dellamorte Dellamore".

StageFright fmovies. DELIRIA

(USA/UK: StageFright: Aquarius)

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Stereo

A group of actors become trapped in a theatre with a rampaging maniac who has just escaped from the nearby psychiatric clinic...

DELIRIA not only marked the directorial debut of Euro-cult favorite Michele Soavi (billed here as 'Michael' Soavi), it also marked a reunion of several prominent figures from the heyday of Italian exploitation. Produced by renowned sleaze merchant Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi - "Buio Omega", "Emanuelle in America") and written by splatter stalwart George Eastman (Luigi Montefiore - RABID DOGS, ABSURD), and co-starring John Morghen (Giovanni Lombardo Radice - CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD), this deceptively modest shocker attempts to subvert many of the clichés associated with 'traditional' slasher movies, and does it with style and grace. Viewers weaned on a diet of bland Hollywood 'horrors' may not succumb immediately to the film's wayward plot developments (including the central device of an off-off-Broadway stage musical which celebrates the very same serial killer who winds up massacring most of the cast!), but once the basic premise has been established, the narrative assumes a near-demonic life of its own.

Beginning with a frankly horrific sequence in which the masked killer is mistaken for an actor during rehearsals and encouraged to 'kill' a female co-star (only to commit the bloody deed for real!), Soavi's direction is razor-sharp and visually appealing. The murders are outlandish and gruesome, though also tragic in places (watch out for a shower sequence which operates both as a suspense set-piece and as a vivid demonstration of human cruelty), and Eastman's clever screenplay strips the characters down to their emotional core, revealing a gamut of fears and prejudices which leave many of them vulnerable to the killer's predations. The climactic sequence - in which a frightened young actress must retrieve an all-important key from its hiding place within inches of the killer's feet - is ghastly, beautiful and terrifying, all at the same time. Outside of these major set-pieces, Soavi's relative inexperience is betrayed by a couple of ragged camera movements and some odd editing choices, while the performances are compromised by flat post-sync dubbing. But overall, the movie is a triumph, one which plays Soavi's mentor Dario Argento at his own game and succeeds beyond all expectations.

(English version)

Michele Soavi's feature film debut as a director was this film, Stage Fright (aka Aquarius and Deliria) from 1987. The film was produced by veteran producer, cinematographer and director Aristide Massaccessi aka Joe D'Amato, who is responsible for many hard core porn films, action adventures and horror exploitationers from Anthropophagous the Beast to Buio Omega. Stage Fright is written by Luigi Montefiori aka George Eastman, the man who played the cannibalistic monster in D'Amato's Anthopophagous and Anthropophagous 2: Absurd, so Soavi's debut has many great names in its credits. The actors are also great and include Barbara Cupisti in lead role as Alicia, John Morghen (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) and the director himself in little role as a police officer. D'Amato gave Soavi pretty much freedom to do this film and he did the right thing by trusting this young talent: the result is fantastic piece of slasher cinema.

A group of stage play actors and crew members are practicing their newest number, a horror musical which seems and sounds by the way pretty interesting. It rains hard and one of the actresses hurts her leg, so she and her friend have to visit the hospital nearby. Everything goes fine, despite the fact that in the same hospital, there is a dangerous psychopath killer in mental health therapy and the same guy committed horrible murder some years ago. When he hears some young females are in the hospital, old memories start come his mind and willing to kill seems to be born again. When the girls return to the set, they soon find themselves trapped inside the huge building and someone killing them one by one. This is the structure of this film, and even though it sounds very usual, the film is very noteworthy and made by talented people.

There are great visuals in this film, and it is easy to see Soavi had been working with Argento before his own directorial career. There are twisted camera drives and angles and many little, but more than effective details, which are also among the elements that make Argento's masterpieces so great. There are many worth mentioning scenes and details in Soavi's film, and one is definitely the use of dummies especially at the very end of the film. They are so incredibly ominous at the end scene that it seems like which of the dummies is just dummy and which the killer! Totally stunning imagery and Soavi reminds me of another great horror director, Scott Spiegel, whose films are also full of little but effective details and crazy camera angles/drives. Spiegel is perhaps more positively crazy director than Soavi, who is pretty calm director, but they definitely share this unique style and innovation in their film making.

There are many scenes that will scare the viewer especially if the film is viewed in peace and alone in the dark, as recommended. The mask the killer wears is very scary and also many memorable scenes include that mask. The tension lasts throughout the film and Soavi really does great job by using visuals and also music in creating atmosphere and tension so rarely found in nowaday horror efforts. The murders themselves are very gruesome, but also very stylish and not too gratuitous, and that is another thing Soavi has learned without a doubt from Argento. The murders in Stage Fright are gory at times, and they may offend some viewers, but still I think they only serve the film as a whole, since the scenes are horrific without showing too much. I had seen the film previously on murky and bad quality VHS which didn't revea

STAGEFRIGHT aka AQUARIUS is a very stylish chiller from Michele Soavi, whose critical reputation rests on this film and the later CEMETERY MAN.

Certainly the film is derivative, and fans of this subgenre will surely comment that they have seen it all before; however, Soavi, like his mentor Dario Argento, is astute when he chooses the likes of ENNIO MORRICONE; GOBLIN, and now SIMON BOSWELL to score his films.

Boswell's compositions together with the opening and end titles written by Stefano Mainetti propel the film along, and provide an aural edge to the onscreen visuals. And if their contributions were not enough, the inspired, and uncredited use of Dmitri Shostakovich's 8th symphony, 3rd movement ("allegro non troppo"), reflects the imaginative touches that distinguish this film from many others.

The play/film within a film works quite well, especially as the cinema is acknowledged to be the art of illusion; indeed this conceit looks ahead to the two DEMONS films, set in a cinema, where the audience are overwhelmed with illusion become reality.

The acting is more than sufficient as the characters are written as types, and set up as victims, just as the heroine has a personality that sets her apart. Her final scenes with the killer are very effective indeed; her fearfulness make her vulnerable, her vulnerability draws us to her, and in drawing us to her, we submit to the relentless onslaught the killer pursues.

This is a film where the viewer/audience surely knows the outcome, but the satisfaction comes from the execution - literally - of the route that the filmmaker takes.

I now have this film on a budget UK DVD which reveals little - I am playing it back on a 16:9 TV, and am very pleased with the quality of the sound (mono) and the visuals, plus some of the unusual, though rare basic extras.