StageFright: Aquarius (1987) Review
StageFright: Aquarius (1987) Review
EXCERPT FROM MY FORTHCOMING BOOK ON EIGHTIES HORROR ENTITLED ‘NIGHTMARES FROM A DAMAGED DECADE’
When Alicia, leading lady of theatre musical production The Night Owl, sprains her ankle during a late night rehearsal, both she and the show’s wardrobe mistress Betty sneak out to get her condition treated. The good news is that there is facility close by with doctors. The bad news is it’s a mental hospital and their star patient Irving Wallace, a former actor who killed over a dozen/sixteen people, has chosen this night to escape and has hitched a lift back with them. One dead Betty later and stage director Peter sees an opportunity to work through the night open the play earlier and capitalise on the death of their wardrobe mistress.
With the allure of extra cash the struggling actors agree. Peter has them all locked in the theatre having Corinne hide the key lest anyone tries to change their minds and leave. With Corinne soon out of the picture the remaining cast and crew find themselves pitted against the damaged mind of the killer they have locked in with them, with no clue as where the key to unlock the theatre door could be.
In the late Eighties I felt I had passed that point in my life where it was likely that any subsequent horror movie could freak me out as my earliest encounters with the genre had done; such as the double whammy of watching The Exorcist and the same with the full cut of Suspiria. All that changed one quiet Saturday night when I ventured to the local video outlet and walked back home with this little title in my mitts.
Having no TV or video recorder of my own I waited till late for the rest of my family to turn in for the night before popping my rental into the player and settling down for what I was expecting to be a trashy watch. It’s true that there are elements of Stagefright: Aquarius that could be considered trashy however the overall effect that Michele Soavi’s directorial debut had on me was far removed from the six-pack giggle-fest I had anticipated. And in the stillness of that Saturday night I was as good as reaching for a cushion to hide behind as the events unfolded on screen.
From the start Soavi is out to subvert our expectations and add twists to the slasher genre standards. A streetwalker is attacked from behind and pulled into an alleyway. Onlookers assemble and start checking the girl’s inert body before a man dressed in black and adorning an owl’s head leaps above them all. But what’s this? He’s dancing? It’s then that Soavi allows us to see the full picture. What we witnessing is a rehearsal for a stage show and as the events continue onstage Renato Tafuri’s camera takes in each character that makes up the production’s company.
There’s the fiery and demanding director Peter (David Brandon), the show’s lead Alicia (Barbara Cupisto), the show’s investor Ferrari (Piero Vida) never without his hat even indoors, diva wannabe lead actress and prime bitch Laurel (Mary Sellers). There’s Sybil (Jo Ann Amith) pregnant and prone to the odd bout of vomiting and her partner Danny (check this is correct) along the standard issue queen Brett who’s not adverse to playing the odd practical joke (played by Giovanni Lombardo Radice a cult actor and has also appeared in Soavi’s later The Sect amongst others). There’s also Willy who looks after the theatre, Betty the wardrobe mistress and bespectacled Corrine all of whom are soon to meet the psychopathic Irving Wallace (T. Clain Parker) and for most also a very grisly end.
With the exception of the first victim everything that befalls the rest is a result of their greed. Electing to stay all night to rush release the play to capitalise on Betty’s death for extra monies they all become potential victims to the ominous and sinister Irving Wallace. Notice how the show’s moneyman Ferrari attempts to bribe the owl-masked killer with wads of the green stuff. Money means nothing in the scheme of things here and our killer cannot be bought.
Nothing is too obvious about when or where the next victim will be picked off with Brett bowing to a mirror to reveal Wallace behind them (a lift from Argento’s Tenebrae on which Soavi worked as an assistant director), Alicia finding mega-bitch Laurel bleeding in a shower unit with that ‘will she, wont she tell the killer that Alicia is there’ moment and heart-stopping moments like Peter shouting ‘KILL HER’ unknowingly directing the real killer to stab Corrine to death as everyone looks on.
Corrine’s death is another moment in Stagefright: Aquarius which underlines heavily how self serving our characters are. Corrine was the only person who knew where the theatre key had been hidden, this was done so anyone who wanted to leave during the all-night rehearsal couldn’t, and rather than help Corrine the rest of the crew practically shake her to death in her final Earthly moments to obtain the location of the key rather than do their best to try and save her.
By now the egotistical stage director Peter looks better than the arseholes he is working with and comes forward as the strongest character for dealing with the killer in their midst. His true colours come to the fore again when faced with certain death he pushes Laurel at a chainsaw wielding Wallace to hopefully buy himself an opportunity to escape the inevitable.
Wallace is a resourceful assailant seemingly adept at sussing out his new surroundings better than those that have been working in it till now. He’s not adverse either to trying his hand out on a variety of tools to dispatch the squealing bunch of second-rate actors rather than settle on just one. Along with the aforementioned chainsaw, he proves equally at home brandishing a knife, axe, drill or ice pick. Wallace also shares an affinity with Willy’s cat Lucifer, which like Jonesy in Ridley Scott’s classic Alien, seems completely at home with the new ‘guest’.
An hour in Stagefright: Aquarius has dispensed with the majority of the characters and moves away from the stalk and slash antics into a more sinister tract. And it is the final half hour that sets the movie head and shoulders above most. Nerve-wrecking and damn creepy we follow Alicia as she awakes following an earlier accident to wander the corridors of the theatre not knowing whether Wallace or any of her crew is still alive. From the pulse-racing discovery of Laurel bleeding in a shower unit to Alicia’s discovery of the missing key’s location there’s next to no dialogue, almost minimal score and a seat-soiling use of sound that leads to one of the tensest moments in Italian horror cinema as well as one of the more visually arresting and poetic put to screen.
As Alicia watches from the wings, armed with a handgun, she spies Wallace take to the stage. Around him he has assembled the corpses of his victims about him. As he takes to adjusting them the cat Lucifer trips a switch turning on a fan. Feathers blow around Wallace as he takes to his seat central to his set-up, his owl mask giving no clue to where he could be looking. It’s an unsettling and almost dreamlike sequence as Wallace sits proudly amongst the dismembered bodies of Alicia’s theatre buddies and one that words fail to do justice to but believe me even if up until now you’ve found everything as standard for this genre in watching the movie you can’t help but marvel at the macabre imagery on screen now. It’s beautiful and disturbing in equal measure.
Alicia has to try and secure the theatre door key right from under Wallace’s feet. It’s embedded in the boarding in full view of the killer but can he see it? It’s hard to tell with that mask on. And is he aware of the key twitching as Alicia does her best to obtain it from her position under the stage? Lucifer the cat certainly is and can’t help jumping from Wallace’s lap to have a closer look at what’s going on. But still it’s unclear if Wallace can see what’s going on and is just biding his time.
From the feather landing on Alicia’s head as she awakens until she finally gets the key Soavi has fashioned one of the classiest and more edge of the seat moments in Eighties horror cinema. After blowing everyone away with such a classy sequence it seems a shame that Soavi felt he had to conform to the slasher norm. We end with a frustratingly banal scene that sees Alicia return for her watch and one final scare that’s too long coming, far too obvious and goes on much too long with Willy nattering on and on about how the gun was loaded and that’s why it wouldn’t shoot earlier.
And then for the briefest of seconds we see Wallace turn and grunt at the camera for one last ‘shock’ before the final credits roll with a replay of the initial dance sequence from the start. Why? It’s so short and the cutting to someone in an owl mask dancing jars badly and why has the killer grunt at all? Soavi has acknowledged that the final shot of Wallace grinning to camera was his nod to the slasher genre by having the killer never die. For all the invention and dazzling use of sound and imagery till now why why WHY conform badly to the norm come the crucial final moments?
Soavi appears in Stagefright: Aquarius as the younger policeman staking out the theatre with an older cop in a patrol car outside in heavy rain. There has been some criticism over the function of the two cops stating that they offer poor light relief and take the plot nowhere. I think the point of their real purpose has been missed. The cops are a red herring. In a standard genre piece the cops assigned to stake out in case the killer returns are normally dispatched in a gruesome manner to highlight that there’s no safety margin for our main characters. Here they remain alive throughout ; twisting that concept , albeit failing to connect this point with the more general viewer.
Another key figure in the creation of Stagefright: Aquarius, co-writer Sheila Goldberg, also appears in the movie playing the bitch of a nurse at St. Mary’s Psychiatric Hospital who attempts to turn both Alicia and Betty away. Genre fans would be interested to know that George Eastman wrote the screenplay. Known for his roles in the likes of Anthropophagus (1980) and Absurd (1981) Eastman, real name Luigi Montefiori, wrote the screenplay under another pseudonym Lew Cooper.
Stagefright: Aquarius is a confident and assured directorial debut for Soavi having cut his teeth as an assistant director for the likes of Lamberto Bava, Joe D’Amato (who serves as Stagefright’s producer) and Dario Argento. Given that Soavi has acted in the likes of A Blade in the Dark and Demons, (also featured in this book) amongst others, has no problem eliciting better than average performances from his cast. There have been criticisms levied at the acting – but this is an ensemble of actors all acting and speaking in different languages and the dubbing is to blame for most of it.
After the mixed bag that were The Church (La Chiesa) (1989) and The Sect (La Setta) (1991) Soavi went on to direct the hugely entertaining and vastly underrated flop Dellamorte Dellamore (AKA Cemetery Man) (1994). It’s a handsomely mounted and hugely persuasive comedy horror that solidifies his position as one of the more unique talents in Italian horror. Stagefright:Aquarius is arguably his masterpiece full of quirky flourishes and imagery. Don’t just take my word for it though. A certain Quentin Tarantino has stated that this movie is ’the best Italian horror film of the 1980’s’ and given his encyclopaedic knowledge of the medium recommendations don’t come much higher than that!
TRAILER
