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Murderock - Uccide a Passo di Danza
Murder Rock
Slashdance / The Demon is on the Loose / Murder Rock: Dancing Death
Italy 1984
produced by Augusto Caminito, Gabriele Silvestri (executive) for Scena Film
directed by Lucio Fulci
starring Olga Karlatos, Ray Lovelock, Claudio Cassinelli, Cosimo Cinieri, Giuseppe Mannajuolo, Berna Maria do Carmo, Belinda Busato, Mario Vittoria Tolazzi, Geretta Marie Fields (= Geretta Geretta), Christian Borromeo, Robert Gligorov, Carlo Caldera, Riccardo Parisio Perrotti, Giovanni De Nava, Carla Buzzanca, Angela Lemerman, Silvia Collatina, Lucio Fulci, Al Cliver
story by Gianfranco Clerici, Lucio Fulci, Vincenzo Mannino, screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici, Lucio Fulci, Vincenzo Mannino, Roberto Gianviti, music by Keith Emerson
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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At a New York dance academy, a mad killer kills one female dancer after
the other, using a hatpin as his weapon of choice. In a dream, Candice
(Olga Karlatos), head of the academy, has a dream in which she becomes the
next victim of the mad killer, who turns out to be ... a man she has never
seen before, but she sees him on a billboard the next day, finds out he's
washed out actor George Webb (Ray Lovelock), and before long, she starts
an affair with him. Eventually, it seems that Candice actually falls
victim to the killer when her assistant (Geretta Marie Fields)
chlorophorms her, pulls out a hatpin ... but simply cannot do it. Later
she admits to the police she just wanted to kill her boss out of jealousy
and then pin it on the real killer - but killing even someone one hates is
usually only half as easy as it sounds ... Candice tells her tragic
lifestory to George, how she had to give up her own promising career as a
dancer after she had become the victim of a hit-and-run accident that
effectively crippled her. Later though, she finds a hatpin and cholophorm,
just like the killer uses, in one of George's drawers and makes a hasty
escape.George follows her and catches up with her in the dance academy,
leaning over another dead dancer. It now turns out that Candice herself
was the mad killer all along, killing the girls out of jealousy of their
ability to dance, and she wanted to put the blame for all the murders on
George, because he was the man who caused the accident that had crippled
her - so right before his eyes, she throws herself into her own hatpin,
moments before the police arrives ... Somewhat of a
transitional film, as the over-convoluted murder mystery of the classic
Italian giallo gives way to the more straight-forward and stylistic
slaughterhouse appproach to killing of the (then current) slashermovie -
which accounts for the many young and attractive but bland cannonfodder
characters that get killed off during the proceedings on the slasher side
of things, and the somewhat unlikely and contrived (yet pretty
predictable) solution to the story on the giallo side. All of this
though might sound more interesting in writing than it is on film, because
someone involved with the movie had the weird idea to also try to cash in
on the then current box office sensation Flashdance, which means
the audience is also treated to quite a few pieces of terrible 1980's pop
and extended dance performances that seriously slow the film down. The
film resulting from all of this is certainly not the worst film you have
ever seen - but it's less than special all the same and not on par with
director Lucio Fulci's best efforts.
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