7. Stagefright - Aquarius (1987)
The directorial debut of Michele Soavi - and a very auspicious one indeed, Stagefright is a Giallo/slasher film hybrid which is stylish and inventive. A group of struggling thespians are rehearsing a play about a serial killer with an owl mask. What they don't know is that a real life serial killer has escaped from a nearby looney bin, inhabited the theatre and is now wearing the owl mask. He begins to knock the cast off one by one. The director of the play had the bright idea of getting one of the actresses to hide the key so the staff would be locked in for the night and forced to learn the revisions to the play. Unfortunately this has left them all fodder for the deranged murderer who dispatches of them all one after the other in a series of well staged and explicit murders. The killing leads to a nail biting finale where the sole actress left tries to gain ownership of the elusive key without getting herself chopped up by the owl faced madman. Stagefright is probably my favourite slasher movie of all time. It breathes new life into a stagnant genre. There is an amazing saxophone driven rock score which just adds extra magic to the movie. The colours of the film are strong. It is a delightfully gruesome movie - the plot may be simple but the murder set pieces are full of tension and Soavi makes good use of the theatre setting. It is evident that he was schooled by Dario Argento, but in this film, Soavi gives the Italian Master a good run for his money.