Nightmares (1980)

A Brilliant Conflict

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Stage fright AKA Nightmares is truly a nightmare, altogether not enjoyable with zero redeeming qualities!I never submit a review with negative comments, rather the only reviews I've been compelled to submit were those of praise.. Today marks a change in my writing a review for Stagefright AKA Nightmares as I truly have not one iota of praise, nor even a sliver of a positive opinion about this film.I am a hard core horror movie fan, one who does not thrive on gore, with blood and guts as a necessity to illicit enjoyment.. I am someone who thoroughly appreciates the entire genre of 70's/80's B-movie horror flicks..some of them even more than all of the entire new generation of horror movies put together..This film however is purely and completely an utter waste of an hour and a half of my life that I'll never get back(and believe me I hate reading this repeated cliché in these movie reviews) but with this movie there just is no other way in how to go about accurately describing the waste of precious time from one's life that will be made should you so choose to watch this film.I beg of you don't do it.. Don't waste your time on this movie..and please, please, please whatever you do, don't make the common, yet horrible mistake of thinking this movie is the 1987 Italian horror film, "Stagefright".. It is not, and is nothing remotely similar to the fine film of Stagefright 1987 directed by the great Dario Argento's star pupil, Soavi.Run, run from this film as fast as you can..its a complete and total waste of your time...1/10

We start things off with a little girl named Cathy who has some, shall we say, "issues" about sex and intimacy. One rainy night, Cathy's in the backseat of a car and the man in the front seat gets too handsy with mom so Cathy freaks out, the car crashes, and mom shoots through the windshield. If you're playing along at home, this means Cathy's intimacy issues now get wrapped up with broken glass issues. Keep that in mind.Flash forward years later to an aspiring actress named Helen. She gets cast in a new play where she meets a cute costar, a jerk of a director, and lots of even worse people. I didn't get that it was a secret that Cathy grew up to be Helen, but just in case it was supposed to be a secret, Helen is Cathy. And then people start to die by getting stabbed by broken glass. It's very easy to figure out the killer and then there's a "surprise" ending and then we're done.Stage Fright aka Nightmares is listed as an early Ozsploitation slasher but it's really more like a late-period giallo, albeit one without any real mystery to it. The violence is pretty tame but the nudity is pretty graphic. It's not scary or even particularly interesting other than as a historical document if you're a slasher fan.

Young Cathy accidentally kills her mother,who is making out with a man in the passenger seat of a car.Believing the man is hurting her mother,Cathy starts hitting him and her mother crashes the car sending her through the windshield.When an orderly tries to molest her,Cathy slashes his face with a broken glass.Years later Helen(Jenny Neumann of "Hell Night" fame)is an aspiring American actress auditioning for a Victorian comic play about death made by sarcastic director George.Soon a black gloved sex-hating killer wielding shards of glass starts killing members of theatrical play.Sleazy Australian slasher with lots of POV shots and fairly brutal glass slashings.The identity of the killer is blatantly obvious and there is a bit of graphic nudity.If you are a fan of "Flesh and the Blood Show","Theatre of Blood","Deliria" and "Opera" you may give this one a look.6 out of 10.

This is clearly a bad film, but I can't help watching it when there's nothing better to do. A lot of bad movies are like that, right? "Nightmares" concerns Jenny Neumann slashing people to death with broken glass for seemingly no reason. She caused her mother's death by accident when she was a kid because she didn't like her cheating with another man, and now goes out to deal her own kind of warped justice on young lovers and her fellow cast in some stage show she is acting in.The plot doesn't seem to go anywhere other than to make sure the rest of the characters are killed off. The crew also try and put a great deal of effort into disguising who the killer is, but it's blatantly obvious from the start. The nauseating POV shots become completely ridiculous in the end, with the camera just meandering through dark halls for at least two minutes for no reason. At one point, the shot even freezes for five seconds! The lighting is absolutely horrendous, and most of the time it is too dark to see what is going on. The camera seems to like to stay focused on empty corridors and rooms, and then pan slightly to a doorway to show a character entering or exiting. Why not have the camera on the door the whole time? It's very hard to ignore all this shoddy work, and really drags the film down.There is quite a bit of blood and gore, and the effects are actually quite good. Jenny Neumann certainly adds beauty to the film also, but it isn't enough to save this murky disaster. Pity really. Anyway, not a good film at all, but certainly not the worst horror flick out there.