Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Derry Herrera Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

metalrage666 I saw this years ago on VHS as a kid and didn't think it was too bad. Maybe this is just too dated for me now or I remembered it differently but the version I saw recently was a special edition with extra footage and in high definition and I couldn't be any more unimpressed. A deranged psycho and mass murderer manages to escape from an asylum by killing a member of staff and makes his way towards a actors studio. That right there is the first plot hole with this, if this guy is so deranged and psychotic, why would he only be serviced by one unarmed, wafer thin orderly and be able to make his way out before the alarm is raised? Several actors who are putting on a stage play about a mass murderer are required to stay late and work on various scenes and they are not able to leave until the director is satisfied. So at the directors request, the studio is locked up and the key is hidden. The recently escaped psycho manages to get locked in with them.From then on it's just a stock standard stalk and slash fare where the killer has typically anticipated every move and manages to be in every place the victims are, even though he's never been there before and is deranged. He never makes a mistake, a whole group of people never manage to gain the upper hand and the local police are all bungling idiots. I'm cringing watching these people stumble from one stupid death scene to the next. In savage irony one of the first who gets killed is also the one who was responsible for hiding the key. Despite all the gory death scenes I was simply bored to death in this. Plus it takes far too long for it to get going. With all of the bickering and bitching going on whilst on and off the set, I'm actually wishing for all these academy award hopefuls to die horribly, so when they do, it's no great loss.There are a few moments in this of genuine tension but they just didn't redeem the movie enough to drag this into a realm of interest.I guess for fans of eighties horror this would be a must see and a must own but for someone with just idle curiosity, borrow it or rent it only.

skybrick736 Stage Fright Aquarius is a truly remarkable artistic giallo film from Michael Soavi. The storyline, following a group working on a stage play, made a great spooky setting. This film almost seemed like an upper-scale U.S. slasher flick. I also loved some of the camera movement techniques that created weird disorienting scenes with the addition of the unsettling music score. Scenes involving the killer owl were great, just the right amount of carnage that wasn't over the top. How can I forget the girls in the movie, they are super attractive as well, all wearing skimpy outfits for their stage performance. One aspect of the film I found pretty lousy though was Pete's character. He received bad dialog and was written questionable motives. All and all, I watched the movie in one sitting and was absolutely glued to the television screen. Stage Fright Aquarius (8/10) is tense throughout and has an amazing ending that is definitely a nice cherry on top.

Bonehead-XL From the get-go "StageFright" is playing with expectations. Like many giallos, we open with a working girl plying her trade on the mean streets. Out of the shadows, hands emerge, pulling her back. Simon Boswell's frantic electro-jazz score begins playing. The killer, dressed in an absurd owl mask, leaps from the alleyway, rolling on the ground. Everyone begins to dance, in exaggerated fashion. The camera pulls back, revealing the city as a set, the setting as a stage. This is akin to what Mario Bava did in "Black Sabbath," revealing the artifice of the film format. If we read the rest of the opening in this light, "StageFright" shows the Italian film industry in miniature. The director is an artist, determined to push taboos. The financiers cares not at all for the director's vision, only if his investment is returned. The actresses are pushed through the meat grinder, degraded. The entire production is rushed, its première only a week away. Considering director Michele Soavi worked for years in the Italian film industry as an assistant director, he can no doubt attest personally to the stuff that goes down on a low budget set.Despite its deeply European sensibilities, "StageFright" is not a true giallo. The identity of the killer is known from the beginning while the police play a small role. Instead, the film owes more to the most American of subgenres: The slasher. With so many depended on formula, many slashers are set apart by their setting. An empty theater proves a fantastic setting for bloody slashery. The premise is right in-line with the genre: A theater trope, doing late night rehearsals, are unknowingly locked in with a brutal killer. The unstoppable killer wears a silly mask and offs everyone in brutal ways, utilizing numerous weapons. The cast is large and loosely defined. An actress is pregnant with the sound technician's child, the leading man is flamboyantly gay, the director is trying to sleep with all of his actresses. It's not really important. "StageFright" even throws in an improbable spring-loaded cat.Despite fitting in perfectly with its slasher brethren, the style of "StageFright" is undeniably Italian. Soavi's studying under Argento is hugely apparent sometimes. Soavi's camera swoops around the theater, taking a frantic first-person perspective. The camera swings from a deadly pickax, crash-zooms on raised knives, and shows red paint mingling with spilled blood. The style is A-grade. When the killer finds the work shop, shown from his perspective, blatantly recalls "Deep Red." Soavi even directly goofs on Dario, either copying or parodying the "man behind a man" reveal from "Tenebre." Boswell's score isn't exactly Goblin-esque. The mixture of hard rock and electronic tones still recalls earlier Italian genre films, frequently powering the action.The film blatantly links horror with opera, mixing murder and dance choreography. The kill sequences continue the Italian tradition of stylized gore. An actress is stabbed repeatedly on stage, calling the audience out on their voyeurism. A man is impaled through a door with a giant, spiraling drill-bit, gore spilling on the floor. A woman is cleaved straight in two through a floorboard, a helpless body pulled out. "StageFright" doesn't mess around. Irving Wallace gets a chainsaw. We see an arm sawed off in clear view, followed by a full-on decapitation, the head rolling across the floor. For all its stylization, "StageFright" is intensely, explicitly gory.Unlike most slashers, who space their kills out over a ninety minute run time, Irving Wallace has eliminated most of the cast by the hour mark. Practically a very gory satire for its first hour, "StageFright" takes a definite tonal shift. The final girl is left completely alone in a theater with a viscous serial killer. The film becomes a series of jitteringly intense near-encounters. Alicia cowers in a shower stall, the killer attacking another girl in the adjacent stall. Because the design of the killer's mask, you can never be sure what he's seeing. The hallways strike you as very small, very tight. The theater becomes very quiet, Alicia aware of how much noise she is making.One extended sequence in "StageFright" will always stick with me. The music drops out, the camera slowly revolving around the entire auditorium. The killer arranges his victim's bodies on stage, smearing each with feathers, tossing a mannequin head off. Irving Wallace sits down, patting the cat in his lap, head down. The key to unlock door, Alicia's way out of this nightmare, sits in the slots of the stage. She crawls under the stage, slowly trying to wiggle the key down into her arm, worried about drawling the cat and the killer's attention. I truthfully, without hyperbola, believe it to be one of the most intense sequences ever put to film. After its torturous conclusion, the scene climaxes with a phenomenal jump-scare, one that always gets me no matter how many times I see the film. The catwalk encounter that follows is great as well, powered by the rock score and making good use of an axe and extension cord, but can't compare to the edge-of-your-seat intensity of the previous scene. Even if the rest of "StageFright" wasn't so good, the film would always be great because of that moment.The final scene returns to the earliest moments meta qualities. Soavi cribs from Argento again, the protagonist remembering back to an earlier scene, searching for a clue. The killer is put down, shot in the head. However, at the last second, blood oozing from the bullet wound, he looks to the camera and smiles. It's a winking acknowledgment of the cliché of the immortal slasher killer as well as pointing out, once again, the artifice of the film format. "StageFright" is a very underrated Italian horror effort, one of the eighties best, frequently overlooked. I adore this one. "Cemetery Man' is Michele Soavi's masterpiece but "StageFright" was the film that proved he was a master.

encyes A friend recommended this horror film, swearing it was one of the best by Italian director Michele Soavi. Well, in all respect to my friend, if this is the best, I'd hate to see the worst. Now this isn't the worst piece of gore I've ever seen, but it certainly does not hold a candle (or hatchet or machete, etc.) to the horror classic of the 20th century. The kills are not that spectacular, the gore is not that gory and the surprises are not that surprising. What's most puzzling in the film is why anyone would put on - or go to see - the erotic play they were staging. The murdering in the movie is really the acting. Poor dialogue, characters you really don't care about and 80's music edited so horribly you'll wince at that alone. The Owl headpiece is interesting - and I can see how that can be frightening - but the ripping off of a costume for a killer's shocking appearance is no less straight thievery from how Jason got his hockey mask. Rent it cheap, just don't buy it.