Stage Fright

Stage Fright has some neat giallo-inspired direction, and tries to do something new with the slasher genre, which by 1987 was wheezing for fresh air. That original idea is that the cast (in this case, a literal cast, as in a theater troupe) is aware of a killer in their midst, but they are locked inside a theater and can’t find the key. The idea — the claustrophobia, the victim pool being aware of the situation well in advance instead of being unknowingly picked off one by one — has promise. Unfortunately, Stage Fright’s biggest problem is a script that requires not just the suspension of disbelief, but the eradication of it. For plot to unfold, the movie forces the characters to betray all logic and sensibility, even logic they have outright spoken aloud. “We need to stick together!” it’s said, moments before splitting apart. That’s one obvious example of the many, many occasions on which has to contort itself against itself just to make things happen. It sounds like I’m complaining about a cliche, but it’s much bigger than that. The way this movie finds ways to force the cast to do something they openly say they don’t want to because to not do it would stop the movie cold is mind-boggling. It’s like two people wrote the script in shifts, with each person invalidating what came before because it didn’t work for what they wanted to write. And that’s not even getting into the dialogue that sucks the joy out of being able to hear, or the characters that are hardly even named, let alone given any depth. It’s a shame, because the movie has a nice visual style to it, and while the synth score is corny, it’s unique. The gore is decent too, not a bunch of cutaway or off-screen kills, but actual SFX that you feel. It’s just a shame the script is a mess in both story and dialogue.