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.
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.