Stage Fright brings Antonin Artaud’s idea of the theatre of cruelty to life and offers up a terrific double entendre for a title to boot.
A messianic director, Peter, decides to incorporate the story of an escaped serial killer, into his latest stage production, this as his players begin to go missing – in one terrific instance, with a pickaxe to the noggin.
The play’s antagonist, Night Owl, his face covered with a Minerva mask, eventually gets another name: Irving Wallace, a morbid tribute to the escaped nut-job who it just so happens, is on the loose nearby. The director’s hope is that by attaching a serial killer’s name to his lead character, controversy will follow, putting bums in seats – even if the idea is more Producers-like, and likely to tank the proceedings.
Dellamorte Dellamore director Michele Soavi, helms things here as well. Soavi is best known as the masked man skulking around a Berlin S-Bahn station in Demons, and in Stage Fright, we get to see a few directorial flourishes in keeping with his collaborator/mentors, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.
Genre heads will appreciate Italian exploitation stalwart, Giovanni Lombardo Radice (City of the Living Dead/Cannibal Apocalypse) as effete Brett, one of the troupe’s dancers, as well as George Eastman (Absurd/Anthropophagus) as co-writer/uncredited.
Everyone else will appreciate the nonstop action, wonderful choreography, insane set pieces including a psychiatrist giving an, um, idiosyncratic ankle exam to an injured dancer, and much much more.
***1/4 (out of 5)
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