Review by Nia Edwards-Behi
I have a soft spot for horror musicals. This may have somewhat coloured my immense enjoyment of Stage Fright, a film about which I hadn’t heard great things. This might be partially because it’s very musical-y. This isn’t a goth opera like Repo! The Genetic Opera, or a rockabilly B-movie homage like The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, nor does it really have the same indie quirkiness of a film like the hugely under-rated The Dead Inside. Stage Fright is indeed an homage in two parts – an homage to slasher films, and an homage to musical theatre, and admittedly it does tend to get the musical theatre bits done better than the slasher bits. However, I had a hell of a lot of fun with this film. It’s gory, ridiculous, affectionate and really quite funny.
The film starts with an amusing twist on the ‘based on true events’ preamble, something which normally puts me off a film right away. This is quickly followed by a very gory, very over the top, very entertaining death scene, which sets the tone for what’s to come. We flash-forward: Camilla (Allie MacDonald) and Buddy Swanson (Douglas Smith) work in the kitchen of a musical theatre summer camp run by washed-up Broadway producer Roger McCall (Meat Loaf). Roger took the youngsters in ten years previous, when their mother was brutally murdered after their hugely successful opening night of their new show, The Haunting of the Opera (no prizes for working out the plot to that one). Camilla desperately wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps, so when Roger announces that this summer’s production will be a revival of The Haunting of the Opera, she convinces Roger to let her audition and rehearse for the show. As rehearsals plough on and Roger increasingly sees Camilla’s involvement as a great marketing opportunity, terrible things start to plague the production once again as it becomes evident that a killer is stalking the students of Camp Center Stage…
Considering the gory opening sequence, it takes a long time for the horror to come back into the film. However, its parody of a musical theatre summer camp is a joy to behold. The songs are tone-perfect, and there are references and homages in there that are mostly obvious but regardless manage to raise a chuckle. What’s intriguing is that the musical theatre stuff seems like complete fluff, but there are some truly dark moments, and while the horror proper takes a while to reappear in the film, there is quite a bit of the dark underbelly of showbiz – albeit amateur showbiz – on display. The pacing of the film is a little bit off, because of the film’s dual-parody, but for me it didn’t detract too much from my overall enjoyment of the film. I suspect, however, if your tolerance is already low for the musical theatre stuff, this is going to be much more of an issue.
Allie MacDonald heads up a talented cast, but really steals the show as Camilla. It’s a charming performance, and her softly-spoken comic timing is wonderful. Meat Loaf is, well, great, and the other youngsters play their relative stereotypes well. The red herrings as to who the killer might be are a bit too on the nose so the reveal is a little bit underwhelming; however, this is saved by a neat, if not hugely surprising, double-reveal. The combination of a ‘putting on a musical’ climax and the slasher movie climax works really well, even considering the slight pacing issues beforehand. The film’s very last scene might make some horror fans roll their eyes, but I thought it actually tied in quite nicely with the extensive earlier establishment of showbiz all being a bit, well, rotten.
The production of The Haunting of the Opera which is central to the film is directed by a talentless sleazeball of a boy who decides the play should be re-envisioned in the style of a kabuki play. The setting does allow for one of the funniest jokes I’ve seen in a horror film this year, which genuinely made me roar with laughter, but it also allows for some slightly dodgy costuming and dance routines that go a bit culturally insensitive. However, I don’t think we’re meant to think this is a good production of the play, nor that the director is very good, and therefore it kind of works, but a bit more sign-posting of that would have been nice.
All in all then, if you’re not fond of musicals, you’re unlikely to enjoy Stage Fright, even if it does have some great and gory kills in it. However, if you do, you might well get a kick out of the combination of high-camp Broadway theatrics and ridiculous slasher movie quips and kills. While at no point is Stage Fright particularly original (it’s a parody, how could it be?), nor particularly ground-breaking, it is, for me, one of the more entertaining films I’ve seen this year.
Stage Fright is released to UK DVD on 26th January 2015, from Metrodome.