Directed by Michel Soavi (the Argento mentee behind the ingenious DELLAMORE DELLAMORTE AKA CEMETERY MAN), with post-production foley and lip sync recording good as to be invisible, this HALLOWEEN meets 42ND STREET 80s slasher film is riveting, scary, funny, catty, and post-modern without being tedious or sadistic. See it alone in the dead of night, with headphones blocking all outside noise, and all the lights off, tune body and soul to the "tick-tock momentum" (as discussed in PHANTASM, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) and thrill to one of the best initial WTF moments of metatextuality since the first Jet fell out of rank in a sudden graceful ballet move. His name? Action.
So it's a dark and rainy night. An old rehearsal space way outside of the city is preparing a sleazy pre-Giuliani Times Square-style dancetacular: a fire in a trash can blazes center stage for crazy flickering shadows; graffiti adorns the fake alleyway walls, second floor windows hold agape witnesses; a subway-skirted Marilyn blasts a saxophone on the balcony; a crazy killer in an owl head comes diving out in a swirl of modern jazz. The director, Peter (David Brandon), gets angry because star Alicia (Barbara Cupisti) doesn't quite get it either, but he thinks the public will swill it up. The suit-wearing producer civilian worries they'll get closed down by the cops (Italy has a long history of 'regional' censorship). Then in a classic move right out of pre-code Warner Brothers, Alicia sprains her ankle - how cliche, notes Peter. And so it is also the deliberately artificial performances of some of the actors that works to heighten their stock theatrical 'types': lecher producer, bitchy but nurturing gay dancer (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), catty slut-and-comer (Mary Sellers), and a black cat (Lucifer) crossing the superstitious wardrobe mistress's path. Turns out Peter was right not wanting to let her leave, as the hospital she goes to turns out to be a mental institution, and a notorious axe murderer has just been admitted, tied to a stretcher... and he doesn't intend to stay long. He and Alicia share one of those uncanny 'see you soon, Clarice' glances as they pass each other in the hallway, like they get a weird glimmer of their own killer-final girl pair bonding to come.
This all may smack of ROTM slasher antics, but as soon as the killer first appears in the giant owl's head, walks nervously on stage and actually strangles and stabs his designated first victim, while Peter yells encouragement, any planned pause for a bathroom trip and drink refill is forgotten. It's got a blood-chilling sense of the meta-macabre; I can imagine seeing this in a theater at night in Times Square and being afraid to turn around in my seat. When what's on stage is so close to what's going on around your seat that you that you can't tell if you're acting like a spectator in a theater about to get strangled from behind or just actually one then you know it's going to be a bumpy ride, and there's no seat belt left to fasten. it's been sliced off by the grindhouse slasher!
And I know the feeling: years ago I was studying to be a drug and alcohol counselor and was interning at Bellevue when one evening I dislocated my kneecap playing a Jim Morrison-esque drunk rock star in an extended improv on the crumbling Bellevue theater stage. None of the fellow actors--all residents-- thought I was really hurt, spooking the pigeons in the rafters as I screamed and heard it as from a distance. They feigned calling an ambulance and feigned concern until finally I got them to stop feigning and follow my pointing finger down to where my knee cap was knocked to the side; the pain was so bad I had to laugh at how inauthentic my screams sounded to me, like John Barrymore cackling at the irony that he couldn't act 'real' pain when it struck him. It took them ten minutes to finally realize I was hurt and not just a great actor.
Even in improv, there should always be a safe word.
Soavi uses every opportunity to fuck with the fourth wall, to collapse the safe word boundary in ways not seen since the musical numbers of Busby Berkeley spilled off the stage and into the dilated pupil of a twirling dancing girl-cello. The only key out of the NITE OWL rehearsal building begins to loom overhead like a giant mirage; running killer POVs follow electrical cord paths as if on wings of a dream; weird mannequins gawk idly and you don't put it past Soavi to substitute real actresses in mannequin poses in some shots and not even call attention to it; a reel-to-reel tape of the Bernard Herrmann-ish musical score that the killer blasts at inopportune times makes Peter's determined vengeance seem like a Warner Brothers cartoon turned opera; a broken bottle of stage blood that looks exactly like the fake-ish 'real' blood, they run together.
There is no safe word.
The initial effect of all this is giddy confusion, with actors and set and costume designers scurrying all over the place and the genres and layers of textuality muddled but that is just what made SCREAM scary, because horror movie trivia and overlapping confusion was such an integral part of our shared film heritage that we felt vulnerable watching, out of our safe zone of set responses. Where did the VCR playing HALLOWEEN in SCREAM's climactic party end and ours playing SCREAM begin? HALLOWEEN's THE THING, and FORBIDDEN PLANET (see my analysis here) are on as well, each relatively comfortable and unscary, both 'comfort films' for me and I'm sure Carpenter as well. That kind of intertextual realism is still underused in horror cinema, as if its so obvious it slips their minds. Soavi doesn't name check, he's way too subtle for that, so subtle I'm not even sure some of the brilliance I glean in his films is intentional, and that only adds to the luster.
The only way it could be better is if it ended at dawn (it makes films like THE WARRIORS, OVER THE EDGE and SCREAM so awesome), but other than that there's little fault to find, especially not in the amazing performance of Barbara Cupisti. We can read her thoughts as they flicker across her face as easily as if it they're in an old lady font, yet she's never overacting. She's a frickin' genius.
Just when you think it can't get any weirder or cooler, the killer, thinking everyone is dead, takes the stage. Man, oh man. I like that he treats Lucifer nicely, and the cat rewards him by... well I wouldn't spoil the tale but anyone who likes their post-modernism rich in bright reds, purples and dark grays, and doesn't mind their soul becoming temporarily stained and bent out of shape like the first time they saw DEEP RED, then Soavi's StageFright (the title's actual spelling) is the girl for you. There's even a great little wink trick ending that's just enough weird to blow your mind figuratively, diegetically, and metatextually, leaving you with shaky hands eager to applaud... even though you're all alone and it's three AM and you don't want to arouse the attention of whatever's flapping outside your chamber door... maybe it'll just go away... but you know how we night owls love a small audience.
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