Joan Crawford chopping down the orange tree in her garden in "Mommie Dearest" was a lot scarier than the maniac chopping up dumb slasher-victim characters in "Stage Fright". Part of the reason is that she wasn't wearing a goofy owl mask while she did it. The killer in "Stage Fright" isn't so lucky.<br /><br />In a turn of events that gives new meaning to the word "contrived", a group of actors become locked in a theater with a homicidal maniac who likes to dismember or otherwise mutilate his victims. The plot allows for a group of potential victims mostly distinguishable by their gender and/or hair color.<br /><br />Typical of the best (and the worst) Italian horror flicks, "Stage Fright" is an exercise in style and violence. Unfortunately, it's a little spotty in this one. There are some interesting camera tricks (a la Argento and Bava), some attempts at gruesome gore, but no real scares or tension. Since none of the characters are behaving in a way that any rational human being would behave under the given circumstances, it's difficult to relate to what's going on in the picture. Take, for instance, the setup:<br /><br />The bitchy, obsessive director of a low-rent musical alienates his cast members by hurling abuse at them as they rehearse. The female lead has a twisted ankle, yet the director isn't concerned about that. The wardrobe director convinces her to sneak out with her during a break so she can get her ankle looked at by a doctor at the "local hospital", which turns out to be a **psychiatric** hospital (cue ominous music). They just happen to be housing an ex-actor who went insane and cut up a bunch of people into little pieces, and by a strange coincidence he escapes and hitches a ride back to the theater by hiding in the back of the station wagon our two heroines are driving. It isn't long before the wardrobe girl gets a pick axe in her head, and when the body is discovered the police and the media show up. Unconcerned about clearing the crime scene, or the fact that any of the actors could be a potential suspect, the authorities just haul the body away and leave two policemen in a car to guard the remaining actors. The director forces the actors to continue their rehearsal, and nobody apparently considers that, oh I don't know, someone was just pick-axed to death and the maniac who did it may possibly still be around.<br /><br />Yeah.<br /><br />Well anyway, that's all you really need to know about the plot, the rest of the movie is people getting lured off on their own and slaughtered in various "creative" ways. The best thing the movie has going for it is a giddy sense of twisted humor, as in the final sequence (the one that proves the psycho killer in movies like this is NEVER dead). There's a little tension at the end with the "last one left alive" trying to stay out of sight. Otherwise, it's hard to ignore the irritating music, illogical motivation, or the fact that the killer is wearing a large goofy headdress that makes him look like an owl.