Pesadillas

Pleasant scope photography elevates this poorly thought out "whodunit" where there's no mystery as to who the killer is for even a second. Every character is a cardboard cutout in line for the slaughter and all the death scenes lack variety. This might be one better left forgotten.

Easy to watch slasher flick with basic thin plot starring jenny neumann from hell night.

Most of the ingredients for a good horror filmare here , blood ,deaths , naked bodies and sex.

Set around a theatre company and the performance of a new play the actors and the crew are picked off one by one,quite a short film that runs at a nice pace. The acting and the string score are quite good, the killings are basic worth a watch.

Heavy on style and wacky P.O.V. shots, but very low on anything resembling a cohesive story. We're essentially told who the killer is from the start of the film, but the script tries to pretend like we don't know and keep it a mystery, but it's so obvious that it makes you wish they'd just throw any mystery out the table and just show the killer as they're doing their slashing instead of filming nearly all the murders in P.O.V. mode.

Stage Fright stumbles through the motions of early 80s slasher filmmaking with all the finesse of a community theater production gone wrong. This Australian attempt at giallo-inspired horror feels more like a dress rehearsal that should have stayed behind closed curtains, never quite finding its footing despite a theatrical setting ripe with potential.

Jenny Neumann carries the film as a traumatized actress haunted by her mother's death, bringing a commitment to the role that the material doesn't entirely deserve. Her performance anchors what could have been complete chaos, though she's often left stranded by a script that mistakes psychological complexity for vague brooding. Gary Sweet makes his feature debut in a supporting role, showing early glimpses of the screen presence that would later serve him well, though here he's working within the constraints of underdeveloped characterization.

The film's atmosphere occasionally sparks to life during its more violent set pieces, where Lamond demonstrates a crude but effective understanding of shock value. Glass becomes the weapon of choice, creating moments that crackle with visceral intensity even when the surrounding narrative feels limp. The theatrical backdrop provides some visual interest, with stage lights casting dramatic shadows that briefly elevate the production values beyond their obvious limitations.

Unfortunately, these fleeting moments of competence are undermined by pacing that drags between kills and dialogue that rarely rises above functional. The film borrows heavily from Italian giallo traditions but lacks the stylistic confidence or narrative sophistication to make those influences feel like anything more than surface-level mimicry. What should be mounting dread becomes tedious waiting, punctuated by bursts of violence that feel disconnected from any meaningful dramatic progression.

The supporting cast delivers workmanlike performances without distinction, moving through their roles with the mechanical precision of actors hitting their marks rather than inhabiting genuine characters. The direction shows occasional flashes of visual flair but lacks the consistent vision needed to sustain tension or build genuine atmosphere throughout the runtime.

This is a rather strange early Australian attempt to ape the American slasher films, but it is only really interesting in the places where it deviates from them. It's one of a small number of slasher films that is set in a theater during a theatrical production, which not only provides a good setting, but also a lot of very worthy victims (theater actors, directors, critics, etc.) as well as a very believable reason why no one notices the initial disappearances (theater people being as self-absorbed and narcissistic as they get). Unfortunately, the back story is very lame, involving a young acting ingenue (Jenny Neumann) with a vague, troubled past (her mother died in a car accident after a sexual tryst). When she is cast in a new theater production, people start being brutally murdered. So who is the killer? Unfortunately, it's probably EXACTLY who you think it is.

The director of this movie was an unknown (at least outside Australia), but the co-writer/co-producer Collin Eggleston gave the world both the idiotic sex film "Fantasm Comes Again" and underrated nature-gone-amok thriller "Long Weekend". Jenny Neumann also appeared in American slasher semi-classic "Hell Night" where she played the English girl (you know, the one who WASN'T Linda Blair)who spends her entire screen time in bed with a guy without ever actually taking off her underwear. Regrettably, she doesn't get naked here either, but pretty much everyone else does. This movie stands apart from the rest of the slasher films in the sheer gratuitousness of its gratuitous nudity, including a LONG scene where one corpulent Aussie lass is chased butt-naked out of the theater and into the street by the killer. In this respect the movie kind of resembles Pete Walkers sexploitation/early slasher film "The Flesh and Blood Show", but it's not a patch on that one.

The film also compares pretty unfavorably with Michel Soavi's film "Stage Fright" with which it is often confused, and a lot of the decent, if micro-budgeted, horror films being made Down Under in the late 70's/early 80's. On the plus side, it's a lot better than "Cut" and some of the crap that has been seeping out of the country more recently. See it if you can find it, but don't go out of your way.