 Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we are drinking Life Force Galaxy Smash. Oh yeah! Today we're gonna bring to you 1987's Stage Fright, directed by Michelle Suave. He did a few notable movies, The Church, which we covered, you can click the link above, and Cemetery Man, which you can click the link above, we did that one too. This movie stars Barbara Cupissiti, and she was in The New York Ripper by The Master Fulci. She was also in The Church and Cemetery Man. You can click those links above again! Giovanni Lombardo Radici is in this. He was in City of the Living Dead, as well as The Church, and Cannibal Ferro. And last, of course, we have to mention, Sting is in this, he was in The Bride, he was in... Whoa, no, I don't think Sting is in this. Yeah, Sting, that's totally Sting in this. No, I don't think so. Look it up. Stage Fright starts off with a woman loitering on the streets. She's walking back and forth. You get the sense she's maybe a prostitute, right? She starts smoking. Do you see these hands come around her neck and pull her into this alleyway and cut? It turns out that this is part of an elaborate play being rehearsed. They're doing a musical about a killer called The Night Owl. Producer is a bit of an asshole. Breathing down her throat. Yeah, he doesn't really give a shit about the artistic side of things. He just wants returns for the investors. One of the actresses, Alicia, she ends up spraining her ankle. Betty goes and takes her to the hospital. She takes Alicia to this psychiatric hospital, his mental hospital. Thinking it's a real hospital. Yeah, and then after when they figured out, she's like, oh, well, whatever, a hospital's a hospital. Like, no, not really. Can't you get someone to look at her ankle? It was like, it's not that kind of hospital. They kind of befriend one of the doctors in the lobby. So the doctor takes them back to his office and they see in one of the cells, lying in bed, restrained, and he turns over and looks at him. And they learn that it's this famous serial killer actually, Irving Wallace. The doctor sees Alicia groping her. He sends him on their way. And on the way back, Betty looks into the cell again, Irving Wallace's cell, and it looks like Irving is sleeping. This orderly turns around in bed and he's got a needle in his neck. Uh-oh. They make it back to the theater. Betty stays behind and it starts pissing down rain. Cat jumps on her lap and scares the shit out of her. And so she gets out of the car and all of a sudden bling whack. A pickaxe goes right into her mouth and she falls down and she drops the key to the theater. Alicia goes back into the theater and instantly gets fired by the asshole director for taking off in the middle of rehearsals. He's all smoking those cheap cigars. Pissed off, she storms out, goes back to the car, finds Betty dead in the rain with a fucking pickaxe sticking out of her face. Cops come and all these people, reporters coming in take the body out. During this whole media scrum, the director gets this idea of actually changing the play last minute to base it on this real killing and this real killer, Irving Wallace. He convinces all the actors to stay even later after they've had their friend murdered. To work on this play that he's now going to be rewriting. That takes days and all that. You can't just do it in one night. The director tells one of the girls, Karine, to lock all the doors and hide the key so no one can get out and get away from rehearsal. Asshole. Everyone goes to get changed. The guy who's playing the killer in that owl costume gets killed by Wallace and he assumes his costume. They're rehearsing the show when everyone's on stage. Killer comes out. And he's like, okay, okay, come on. Little faster, come on. Pulls up the knife and starts stabbing her for real. They're like, ah, this is great, great performance. They don't realize he's killing her for real. Then they do realize he's really fucking killing her when they see all the blood and everything. And he takes off into like the wings. The girl who got killed on stage is Karine, the girl who hid the key. So they don't know where the key is to get the fuck out of this theater. We gotta get the fuck out of here. Let's get out of here. Ernie! Ernie, what are you doing? Ernie! They all locked themselves in one of the dressing rooms and try to think of what the hell to do here. Two of the guys think, well, okay, let's go look for the key. Everyone else will stay locked in this dressing room. So they head off to go look for the key. Irving Wallace starts banging on the door to get in, punches right through the door and grabs a guy. You're like, well, how is he gonna kill him like that? Well, he takes his drilling drills right through the door through this guy's fucking gut. That's crazy. That's a crazy kill. The other guys can't find the key. They come back to find this guy dead and they're like, fuck, where do you get this drill from? Oh, there's a carpentry department in this theater. So they decide to go to the carpentry department to get weapons to arm themselves to then go hunt down the killer. And that's where we're gonna end the plot. If you want to see how stage fright ends, keep watching. It really ramps up from here. Yeah. The one thing that you'll notice about this movie is that it's super 80s right off the bat, right? So 80s. But in a good way and in the best way. Just a matter of setting. Yeah. And the fact that it takes place in the theater, it's all turned up a notch for the sense of theatrics. Yeah, exactly. Like in the beginning when she walks in, she's got that hair that wig on and the stocking and everything is all neon. Well, that's because it's a set. It's not real life. And the fact that it's a wicked theater, there's tons of places for the killer to hide, right? And for the victims to go to. In the rafters, subfloor under the stage, around the curtains, everywhere. The dressing rooms. There's tons of places. It's also neat how the killer can hide in plain sight, use the owl costume, right? Or he could use other costumes. Or he could use other costumes too. There's an entire dressing room and shit loaded with costumes. I love the scenes that take place in the rafters and stuff. It's great. What a great setting for chasing down a killer is so cool. Another cool thing is that the killer's mask or like headpiece is super memorable, right? This is one of the biggest hallmarks of the movie, right? Here's the name stage fright. Oh, you think of that fucking owl head? Right away, yeah. It's so cool. Black suit with the mask is perfect. Anything more I think would be overkill. The atmosphere of this movie is great. Like we mentioned, the theater setting with all the vivid colors. Super 80s, neon, bright colors. Very Italian, giallo-style lighting. And I love the fact that it's pouring rain all night during this film. And it's just buckets of, like you said, sheets of lead rain. Yeah. It adds to the isolation of it all. Clostrophobic rain almost. Yeah, yeah. It's like even if they did kind of get out, they wouldn't want to leave because it's raining so hard, right? And talk about atmosphere near the end where he's kind of offed almost everybody and he's sitting in that chair taking in what he's done and appreciating all the bodies that he's set up. And that cat jumps on his lap, petting the cat all nice and all those feathers are flying around. And it's like such a cool surreal dreamlike sort of scene. Dreamlike sequence. And it's kind of beautiful. It's all about death. It's still a beautiful scene. The characters for this movie too, every one of them, and there's a lot. There's a lot of people in this movie. Every one of them is memorable. They all have their own part to play in the movie, work off of each other perfectly too, right? Right from the beginning of the movie, you get the dynamic between all the characters right away. Like they just nail that. So you know kind of the hierarchy here, you know? The director's a fucking asshole. You got the producer guy in there too. Yep. He's a sleazeball. It's about to get killed by walls. The first thing he does is pull out all this money to try to pay him off. Yeah. Well, that doesn't fucking work. This movie at face value seems like it's just your standard slasher. But I don't think it really is. Change is a lot of things up. Like the fact that they all get weapons and decide to go hunt down the killer. You rarely see that in slashers. Usually they're hiding and just kind of waiting to be killed off. But they're like, fuck it. Let's go get weapons from the carpentry department, all these axes and shit. Let's go find this guy. Yeah, they're not really stupid in this movie because they even say it's like, well, we need to all stick together. There are a couple of parts where they split up, but then they realize what they've done. They have to stick together. Yeah, exactly. That's pretty rare too. Usually they split up in ones or twos and then get picked off. Also the fact that the final girl, the main character in this, she does sprain her leg, but it's not like running away. Like, ugh. Yeah, yeah. Then she's limping after it. She sprains her ankle in the first, what, 10 minutes of the movie? So it's like not your typical structure, you know? She's injured, but she's injured from the beginning. Yeah. Not while running away. She has encounters with the killer. She's close with the killer, but the killer never notices her. Like when she hides in the shower there. Yeah, and it's like, all he has to do is turn a little bit and he can see her. But that doesn't happen, right? It's like, ooh, it really puts you on the edge of your seat. The music for this movie, it fits the movie perfectly. And there's so many changes in the music too, right? You got your super typical 80s synth. The opening theme is just like, oh, yeah. It's like fucking watching 80s action movie with the saxophone. Yeah, get right into it. And then for like the horror scenes, it gets scary. Yeah. And for the action scenes, it starts jumping. It gets you going. And it does exactly what it's supposed to do. So 80s. That's great. The kills in this movie are all so fantastic. They're the pickaxe through the fucking face. Oh, yeah. He stabs that woman on stage. I like how he does it all slow and he keeps doing it. Well, you know, and it's like, oh, it looks like a great performance, but it's like pretty hard to watch actually. Drills the guys right through the door. Oh, that's a great kill. That's a good one, yeah. That's part where a girl falls through like the floor. They're trying to pull her up, and they do pull her up, but it's only half of her. You took a chainsaw to her like down below, saw her right in half. Yeah. I met you in Dupalo. Now you go down below. Is it soup yet? And then they look down, and they just see him down there with this chainsaw. Yeah. And it's super creepy. Yeah, it's great. And it's lit really well too, right? The flashlight on him. He catches the director, and he cuts his arm off, and then the chainsaw stops working. So then what does he do? He takes the axe that he had. He hit right off. That's great. And it's also cool the killer in this has no motive. He doesn't need one. He just wants to fucking kill people. Yeah, yeah. It's established early on. He's a psychopath. Yeah, there's no, it's not a revenge type thing. Just killing for the sake of killing. Exactly. Much like Michael Myers. The final act too is fucking phenomenal. Ramps up even more. You're really rooting for the final girl too in this. You really do. Yeah, more so than most slashers I'd say. They really hang the ending on almost on a thread. Literally hang. Yeah. And then there's also not one ending to this either. There's two. The double climax. Showing them right between the eyes. It's what I did. Showing them right between the eyes. I said I was going to do it. He says like 20 times. Showing them right between the eyes. So if you're in the mood for like just a fucking 80s fest. Yeah. Slasher. Definitely check out Stage fright if you haven't. It's a blast. It's one of the best I think slashers that come out of the 80s. It's not part of like a big series or big franchise. Probably one of the better standalone slashers. Oh, exactly. Yeah. And it definitely stands alone. Like man, it stands out. Like a sore thumb for being awesome. Yeah. You know, not for being bad. No, it's fantastic. It's just fun. It's got humor where it needs to have humor. Yeah. Gore where there should be gore. Perfect. There's not too many bad things to say about this movie at all. Besides the fact that Sting isn't in it. Until next time. Keep drinking.