Stage Fright (1987)
Michele Soavi—Argento protégé, Fulci collaborator, and director of Cemetery Man, clearly enjoyed himself orchestrating 1987’s Aquarius, aka Deliria, aka Bloody Bird, aka Stage Fright—a diverting, self-aware prance about, packed with dressing room dread and backstage blood.
A soundstage massacre ensues when absconded criminal nutbar, Irving Wallace skedaddles from his cuckoo’s nest, inhabits the persona of a demented murderer, and infiltrates an already tense rehearsal of a play about the Night Owl—a knife, chainsaw, workshop tool, pickaxe-wielding serial killer, who preposterously carts around an enormous, cumbersome owl-head, balancing it precariously on his noggin, yet somehow manages to retain a keen peripheral vision, whilst staging his own theatrical corpse gallery—replete with softly falling feathers, fake snow, and an added musical medley for full dramatic effect.
The terror-stricken cast and crew must negotiate elevated walkways, crank levers and pulleys hidden amongst the backdrops and shadows of the theatre, and shine spotlights down from the reverberating rafters, which all render the set-pieces pretty effective, and milk the somewhat novel milieu as a fairly original slasher film setting, especially once the phone lines get cut, the power is shut off, and our disparate band of survivors are locked in like SPAM® in a can—all the while, a torrential downpour tumbles down outside. I was amused every time Soavi cut away to the rubbish lookout cops—supposedly on guard, but they were mostly just eating spinach, I think. Still, the night blows rainy, and the nocturnal suspense builds.
It all makes for a fun, escapist, camp as you like ‘80s stalk and slash. Soavi’s impressive staging, blocking, and commanding use of camera all add an urgency to the proceedings. The art design, cinematography, and cutting successfully mesh, are quite immersive—and as silly as the movie gets, it doesn’t compromise on the obligatory, grisly killin’s. A particularly nasty drill-kill gives way to a clever moment where real claret drips onto fake blood as the film’s lines blur between reality and theatricality. Another inventive, Scream 2-esque moment struck me, in which the play’s reels of audio are set running by the wannabe bird-of-prey, resulting in a cacophonous quest to find the loon with the disorienting diegetic score blaring.
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