*Blog post started on July 27, 2020.
I must be placing too much pressure on myself to be something worthwhile. To make sure I had new content for today's post, Amazon Prime was activated as was my drinking habit. It started with "StageFright Aquarius" to determine whether "Screen Drafts's" number three giallo film of all time was actually part of the genre (As it turns out, I did not need to write this blog till Wednesday). Two drinks were not enough after the film concluded, so I thought it made sense to wrap up the first season of "The Boys".
The conclusion to the first run of episodes ran a little longer than anticipated. Drunk quesadilla grilling and toast with remnants of Domino's garlic sauce caused a couple of pauses. Deciding that I needed to get a back bump in for old time sakes led to a delay in the viewing. Skimble even put a stop to the broadcast when I went to pet Eva after I lectured him about being codependent towards me. Perhaps I need to be afraid of his need to love me because his accurate pounce on the Apple TV remote to return to the main menu was impressive. This one-eared fluffy monster must have been a rodent killer at some point.
I apologize for being stressed and depressed my feline friend. There are just times I need to register that and receive fewer boops. Reading my old Adrian Tomine journal led to me realizing how my life SEEMS about the same as 10 years ago, sans my stripper friends to distract me. At least my alcoholism has improved. How drunk did I get at the defunct Peoria Theater for the "Drunken Zombie Double Feature"? Was my five hours in front of the TV triggered by my decade old scribbles? Glory days?
In the end, I am glad that I am blogging now as opposed to journaling. Reading my past works, my life needs to be told in a narrative instead of free-flowing. If I have moments where I cannot make out what I was trying to say, it feels like I failed myself. On the plus side, my life does not FEEL as messed up as it once did.
Why can I not appreciate semi-charmed kind of life? It was pretty much the theme of my senior year of high school. Oh yeah, I did not care for high school. Since that album was released in 1998, that means it is associated with two years of narrow-minded Christian classmates. My mind was not exactly woke, but wide enough to women who did not wear long denim skirts were not sluts and the pitch that only Christians go to heaven was bullshit.
Fear of being totally alone has been consuming some hours of my time. There are times that I miss my recent ex, but my codependency never allowed me to be comfortable. Since there are many people who do not want to live alone, it seems like making a connection will be trickier. My method to avoid loneliness was to be chasing some kind of goal, but I have never caught anything, so I should rethink that approach. What I want right now is to try is some truly great hallucigenics to make sense of it all this. Why am I feeling like Stacia is calling me?
It is tough right now because the last three paragraphs was me just trying to make a connection with you, the reader. This is the first time I do not have to edit the middle of the intro rant when I republish this a third time on ninetyforchill.com.
The read on this experience is tough. Am I getting better with my structure or am I still practicing fruitless acts? I can still segue though because I am feeling a bit like a desperate actor trapped overnight with an owl-masked serial killer.
StageFright (1987, 90 minutes)
Everyone is desperate to make this new musical about a serial killer work. With rent coming due, each performer and the director, Peter, need a hit. The problem with the production is primarily Peter. Insistent that his vision be realized, he excepts no excuses for any shortcomings, even injury. This includes his lead actress Alicia who can barely walk let alone dance.
The play's wardrobe woman Betty decides it is best that she get Alicia's injury looked at, so she sneaks her off to the closest hospital for relief. Any doctor should be able to handle a bum ankle, so who cares that it is a mental institution? It is only fitting because a fellow actor is residing there, Irving Wallace. Wallace is responsible for 16 murders and he is awaiting a psychological evaluation before he goes to trial. Relief for her injury or not, Alicia will have an interesting story when she returns to the set.
Things become interesting back at the soundstage because Betty and Alicia had inadvertently provided Wallace a chance to escape and a ride to a place he knows very well. It does not take long for him to go back to his most recent practice as he dispatches Betty within minutes of arriving. The authorities and the press are quick to the scene, and just as quickly, Peter and the producer, Ferrari, have a plan to capitalize on this very recent event.
They decide that as long as the police will be stationed outside the sound stage, the script can be retooled and rehearsed all night. Their retooling is incorporating the fresh on the public's minds killings of Irvin Wallace. There is one problem. The actor portraying Wallace can not find his owl-headed costume. When the rehearsal resume, the scene has the villain ready for to perform, but why does he have a knife when it calls for strangulation?
It is apparent that Wallace is out to kill the cast and crew, and his most recent victim was told by Peter to hide the keys to the soundstage so everyone has to stick around to get this play ready for opening night. The cops cannot hear the going on inside, so it will be up to the crew to decide to fight a prolific and ingenious murder or find some other way to escape. No one will come to open the stage for 10 hours. Can they last that long?
The length of "StageFright's" plot synopsis would seem appropriate for a dime store yellow-novel (a giallo in Italy that inspired the name for the Italian horror/mystery genre), not a slasher movie. This feature lacks the mystery to be anything but a slasher, but when you take inspiration from Dario Argento when it comes to the kills, you are going to have a unique cinematic experience.
"StageFright" left me pondering if Darren Lynn Bousman was inspired by this film when he created "Repo: The Genetic Opera". Music plays a great supporting character in this film and all of the set pieces are fun. Director Michele Soavi has some difficulty with the wider shots, but what is going on in the shot keeps the audience amused. All the kills are up close and personal, and serve as the perfect, brutal reward for the viewer's patience.
This may be one of the most brutal slasher movies before the end of the century. I do not want to spoil anything, but we do have a pregnant couple featured in the film. Slasher movies tended to be a little more shy (or were forced by the MPAA) when it came to presenting brutal death when compared to giallo. Because the Italian director is a product of the latter genre, he stretches out the length of the murders with strong camera cuts and close ups. It is trickier than it sounds since we get some powertool kills, the seemingly most efficient weaponry in slashers. Nothing is off limits in terms of violence, so every murder finds a fun new way to present discomfort.
This perfect merging of giallo style and slasher formula only suffers from budget hinderances. The film is literally filmed on a sound stage, when a theater would have been appropriate. Nothing is done to look like an opera house or even a college theater, so no thought is put into placing the audience in the right atmosphere. In a sense, it feels like a knock off of Dario Argento's "Opera". When I take that into consideration, the lack of intensity through out pushes it further from being considered an example of giallo.
Intensity only comes with action, so that space between the premise establishment and the kills is void of emotion. It leads you to wish something tragic to our expecting couple or our antagonist lets us in on his lore to start pulling on some heart strings. The writers must have been aware of this because you get one of those.
"StageFright" is a slasher movie that delivers because of its unique approach. Besides inspiring ridiculously-premised films like "Repo: The Genetic Opera" and the "The Wizard of Gore (featuring the Suicide Girls), the stylized approach to violence can be seen in most European horror that came at the turn of the century. This film is what "Friday the 13th" if it was handled by an adored indie director.
"StageFright" has vision and gore. Who could ask for anything more? Well, perhaps trained dancer. It could use some rhythm.
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