Nightmares (1980)

Good idea lost in the noise

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

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

Nightmares is one of those better horror films with an intriguing premise. Causing an accident which took the life of her mother, when she was a little girl, now an adult, the horrific visual memory, that 63 night, of seeing her mother thrown through a windscreen, at the sound of splintering glass, leads her on a series of killings, using shards of glass. Unfortunately for the whole cast of the acting troupe, she's just joined (this includes a twentyish Garry Sweet) they are to become her latest victims. Some of them meet their fate in quite gruesome ways. Some of the violence in Nightmares is sexual too, particularly an early scene, that's quite sick, and eye shocked me the first time I saw it. It involves a naked girl in a steeet, non thespian, fleeing off, after her naked lover buys it, in the lower region I might of add. The girl becomes trapped and this shard of glass rips across her breast a couple of times, where her nakedness is soon the colour of mucky red as she scrambles away, but inevitably becomes another victim to this psycho's credit. What I loved about this scene, was that it was shot if in hand held motion, but also at different angles, all from out psycho's POV. It was really quite scary, well the first time I saw. There are a couple of scary moments here and there. Nightmares doesn't have a happy outcome. The last victim (Sweet) buys it in bed, the same place he did in Macbeth, not so violently I would imagine. Yes our psycho gets away, unscathed. Let's face it, some psychos in movies do. As an end gag, we hear our female psycho stating her name again, for she is auditioning once more. Her character being a great actress, we know she's gonna win the audition, and that means a new batch of victims. Jenny Neumann is fantastic as the taunted girl, screaming and ranting to herself, and missing stage cues, while in la la land. The rest bring in so so performances, apart from Max Phipps, great as a harsh director, who me, personally as an actor, wouldn't want to have as a director, plus his ally, evil tongued critic, John Michael Howson, also great and funny too. This guy could actually act. He's also credited with the movie's idea. Not a badly made flick, and one of the better Aussie horrors, but not a great one.

This extremely weak Australian excuse for a motion picture is sort of like the Pavlov Dog Experiment amongst horror movies. You remember this famous "Conditioned Reflex" experiment from your school books, right? The Russian scientist Pavlov proved that dogs tended to salivate before the food actually came into their mouths and this through repetitive routines stimulating the animal's reflexes. Pavlov rung a bell a couple of instants before the food was delivered to the dog and, after a while, he became anxious and excited and already started salivating from hearing the sound of the bell. What the hell has this whole boring explanation in common with a sleazy and low-budgeted Aussie slasher flick, I hear you think? Well, the modus operandi of the maniacal killer in "Nightmares" is an exact variant on Pavlov's experiment. Each and every single murder sequence is preceded by the raw sound and image of the killer breaking a window, because he/she insists on using a sharp piece of glass to slice up the victims. So this means that, after a short while, inattentive and bored viewers can afford to doze off and simply look up again when they hear the sound of shattering glass. That way they still don't miss anything special! Regarding the quality of "Nightmares" as a film I can be very brief. This is a cheap, uninspired and largely imbecilic Aussie cash-in on the contemporary popular trend of American slasher movies. In the early 60's, a four-year-old witnesses the cruel death of her mother as her throat gets slit open in a nasty car accident. Twenty years later the same girl – Helen Selleck – is a successful stage actress, but she still has severe mental issues and regularly suffers from horrible flashbacks and traumatic nightmares. She auditions for a role in a black comedy play revolving on death and gets the part. Shortly after the big premiere, everyone who's even remotely involved with the production gets slaughtered. It is truly retarded how this movie attempts to uphold the mystery regarding the killer's identity and motivations even though even the most infantile viewer can figure it out after the first murder already. I don't think I've ever seen a more obvious whodunit than "Nightmares" and the creators should have just showed his/her face straight away and save themselves from embarrassment. The murders are explicit and very bloody and there's also an unhealthy large amount of gratuitous nudity to "enjoy". However, the production values are poor and thus the movie is never at one point shocking or provocative. The few clips we get to see of the actual play make it appear that it quite possible could be the worst thing ever performed on stage. The only positive elements in the film are the characters of the director and the gay newspaper critic, whom are both delightfully sarcastic and insult the rest of the cast members as much as we do. "Nightmares" is a dreadful piece of exploitative horror cinema, but hey, at least I gave you a golden tip to make it more digestible.

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.