All Rise...

Judge Patrick Bromley is waiting for you in the wings.

The Charge

The theatre of death.

Opening Statement

The directing debut of Michele Soavi, the former assistant director to Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava, arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Blue Underground. Is it a masterpiece of Italian horror? Or yet another slasher movie with a killer in an owl mask?

Facts of the Case

While rehearsing a dance show about a murderer called the Night Owl, a group of actors are locked inside the theater and stalked by a real killer wearing an owl mask. Some of them fare better than others.

The Evidence

Just a few years ago, I wouldn't have appreciated a film like Michele Soavi's Stagefright (a.k.a. StageFright: Aquarius, which is a much worse title). Italian horror just wasn't my bag, and I found the combination of half-formed plotting, brutal gore and dubbed actors something of a chore to sit through. Thanks to immersion therapy—I have watched a LOT of Italian horror in the last year alone—I've come around on it and can now appreciate what the subgenre has to offer.

Stagefright is an above-average entry in the Italian horror genre. While it suffers from a lot of the problems as many other efforts—namely that the script is underdeveloped to the point that the movie becomes boring at times, which is one thing a movie about an owl-headed killer should never be—director Soavi directs the hell out of it and does his very best to keep things stylish and entertaining. It's clear that he learned a lot working under Dario Argento; he uses the same dramatic lighting, the same canted angles. But there's also a freshness to what Soavi is doing in Stagefright that makes it feel, I don't know, younger? It's not really about age; while there's a 15-year difference between him and his mentor Argento, I wouldn't want to suggest that Argento had already lost his groove by '87 (he hadn't). It's more a function of Soavi having learned a lot from working under talented directors, took what he learned and gave it his own spin.

It's not all successful. There are no characters worth caring and few that we even like; unfortunately there's also only one who's a big enough douche that we're rooting for his demise. Everyone else is just kind of there. The trapped-in-a-theater conceit never works as well as it should, feeling neither claustrophobic enough to create tension nor finding a way to sustain its own "bottle episode" approach to storytelling. But Soavi is canny enough to punch things up at regular intervals, whether it's with a particularly stylish sequence or some nasty gore, which, as presented in its uncut form (as it is on this Blu-ray), is both frequent and abundant. Like so many Italian horror films, there are touches of unexplained weirdness that creep in everywhere, best personified by the killer wearing the enormous owl mask. I mean, I get that it's tied in to the show the actors are staging (about a killer known as the Night Owl), but it's one of the least practical killer masks in cinematic history. It's enormous and cumbersome, but also weird and effective. It's a choice of form of function. In that way, it's the perfect symbol for Stagefright.

The film arrives on Blu-ray thanks to Blue Underground, a label that continues to do truly exemplary work with cult and exploitation films. Stagefright has absolutely no business looking as good as it does, but the 1080p HD transfer of the film (in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio) is practically flawless. No signs of aging are apparent—the print looks like it was struck yesterday—and both the colors and detail have been well-rendered. Two lossless audio options are offered: a 5.1 surround mix and a standard stereo mix. While either one is acceptable, I liked the DTS-HD 5.1 mix a bit more only because it has more dynamic range and makes the score more immersive. The supplemental section is made up almost entirely of interviews with various participants: director Michael Soavi, stars David Brandon and Giovanni Lombardo Radice (interviewed separately), make-up effects artist Pietro Tenoglio and composer Simon Boswell. Also included are the film's original trailer and a gallery of production stills and poster art.

Closing Statement

Stagefright is way more style over substance, but the same could be said of many films in the Italian horror tradition. While it lacks the genuine eccentric beauty of Soavi's later Cemetery Man, it's an impressive debut and a decent slasher that's different enough from other films of the period to stand out. Blue Underground's restoration of the film is so good that the disc is worth checking out just to see a low-budget slasher that's over 25 years old and looks as gorgeous as this one.

The Verdict

Innocente.

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