Murder-Rock: Dancing Death

Loved it. Great suspense, disturbing murder scenes. Not too gory, but the suspense makes up for it. Very tense, the closeups, the pre-murder lighting and screams, the sound of the heart stopping. The victims' desperation is well played. Music is great to set you in the era, but you'll find it cheesy if you don't like 80s stuff. Some of the nudity was perhaps unnecessary but still stylishly done. The movie is weird but well executed. It isn't as gruesome as a gore flick, but I think it was more disturbing as it provides greater immersion. The slow killings are a shocker as you can feel them as real. I found myself trembling several times watching this, both by the murder scenes themselves and the suspense going through all the movie. Great camera shots, great scene composition, awesome lighting. The plot is simple but it works. It's interesting to watch the students accusing each other of the murders. There's an unexpected plot twist that I found rather interesting. Don't watch it if '80s cheesiness puts you off. In my case it was a plus. My first venture into giallo cinema and it satisfied me beyond my expectations. If I can find similar movies will definitely watch them. Last recommendation: do yourselves a favor and don't watch it dubbed, watch it in Italian as it's intended to be watched. Dubs for low budget movies aren't precisely good and will make the movie look fake. Get Italian audio with captions for maximum enjoyment.

Nothing very special about this giallo. A bunch of dancers are trying out for parts, and some get murdered by a hatpin stuck into their left breast (where it looks like it would actually pierce a lung and not the heart as intended). Some of the dancing scenes are pretty sexual.

The studio where they do their dancing has a rather odd system at the end of the day whereby a voice comes over an intercom, and the lights flash on and off repeatedly. I guess this is to make for more suspense or to make the killing scenes more exciting? It's more on the annoying side.

One of the women has a dream in which she is pursued by a killer with a pin (it changes sizes throughout the dream, sometimes appearing giant). She later sees the man from her dream on a billboard. She tracks him down, finding him to be a bit of a washed up, alcoholic actor, and starts a relationship with him.

Much more than that I don't remember.

One of Lucio Fulci's "gentler" films, MURDER ROCK is not very popular among gore fans (largely because of the lack of eye gougings and disembowellments), but it has much to recommend. The story deals with a maniac who is killing the girls at a dance school in New York -- together, a cop and a psychiatrist track the maniac down. Keith Emerson contributes a dated, but enjoyable, soundtrack, and cinematographer Giuseppe Pinori makes fine use of half-lighting, a la Mario Bava's SEI DONNE PER L'ASSASSINO. Fulci cameos as an agent. Recommended for Italian horror buffs. *** out of ****

Lucio Fulci is one of the best and most underrated directors in history. Though not all of his films were great, at least 7 of this films should be in any horror anthology. This film is hard to find, though it was released here in Argentina. In the beginning I thought this was gonna be Flashdance - The Return, but ends up being a clever thriller. The killer's method is original, and the resolution quite surprising. Not one of Fulci's best, but a very good film indeed. Score: 8.

Shot in the winter of 1984 and helmed by Lucio Fulci, this giallo was influenced by the success of "Fame" and "Flashdance," just combined with "Curtains." To be expected, there's a whodunit angle with slasher bits, yet it's restrained in terms of gore, although there's an explicit hatpin penetrating a woman's chest sequence.

It starts quite entertainingly, but becomes increasingly contrived and curiously dull, particularly as it switches into the last act. Whatever was captivating about the opening is essentially jettisoned for a less interesting whodunit mystery and the detective work thereof. However, there are some creative elements, and the female cast is good. The top ones for me are Maria Vittoria Tolazzi (Jill), Angela Lemerman (Susan) and Belinda Busato (Gloria) with a nod to Carla Buzzanca (Janice).

A few years later "StageFright" and "Death Spa" would tread similar terrain and do it marginally better. Yet it's superior to "Killer Workout."

It runs about 1 hour, 33 minutes, and was shot in the studio in Rome, with exterior sequences done in New York City.

GRADE: B-/C+