StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

You could see this film as a indictment of the state of cinema, show-business and celebrity in the 1980s but I prefer to think of it as a great slasher with giallo touches and more screaming than you can shake an axe at. Stage Fright has everything you could want: tension, humour, great camera-work, decent performances, imaginative death scenes, and a killer soundtrack. Call me weird, but I'd say this could be the greatest date movie ever made?

Unfortunately Stage Fright, along with Opera, Demons and to a lesser extent The Church, was the death rattle of the glory days of Italian genre cinema.

Who'd have thought a owl-headed killer could be so terrifying?

Original letterboxd review