MURDER ROCK (1984)

3 stars

88 Films. Limited Edition UHD and Blu ray or separate Blu Ray. Italian Collection #89. 14th July

Screen title: Murder-Rock: Dancing Death

Aka: Murderock – Uccide a passo di danza/The Demon is Loose

At the New York Arts For Living Center, dance students are feverishly rehearsing under the watchful eye of Candice Norman (Olga Karlatos) who runs the school and choreographer Margie (Geretta Marie Fields). Talent agents are due to assess them – but it still needs work. This leaves the students disgruntled, especially as they are working hard – and unbeknownst to them they only need three of the dancers for an upcoming project.

In the girls locker room one of the dance students, Susan (Angela Lemerman), is chloroformed in the shower and murdered by being stabbed with a long needle through the heart by an unknown assailant.

Lt Borges (Cosimo Cinieri) of the NYPD is investigating the killing. Of course the other students are upset. Candice is informed of the murder whilst Dick, the academy director, is at her apartment (looking shifty).

Later Candice gives a big speech that they can’t stop dancing despite their friend being dead! She’s all heart. Before long another student has been killed (and her pet bird). All the staff and youngsters at the academy come under suspicion and there are plenty of red herrings thrown up, but you know it will always be the person you least expect is the killer!

Candice has a dream which turns nightmarish with a man pursuing her with a needle to kill her. Next day she sees his face on a large advert on a billboard and decides to track him down (which you would wouldn’t you). She discovers he is George Webb (Ray Lovelock) and after initial reluctance she finds herself falling for him – despite the fact she thought he might be the killer.

With a funky music score by Keith Emerson, this is an okay, if wildly dated giallo, which has disco music, dancing, writhing bodies, boobs, blood and leg warmers – think FAME with some FLASHDANCE chucked in for good measure as far too many, often cheesy, dance sequences punctuate the plot.

This was apparently originally conceived as a trilogy – with Killer Samba and Thrilling Blues to follow. They were never made as director Lucio Fulci fell ill.

EXTRAS

4 stars – comprehensive set of extras by Eugenio Ercolani

UHD: Audio Commentary by Italian Cinema Experts Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson

Italian opening and closing titles and trailer. These are repeated on the Blu ray.

Blu ray:

Interviews with actress Silvia Collatina (9 mins), actor Al Cliver (Pier Luigi Conti) (13 mins), Fulci’s daughter Antonella (16 mins), Eugenio Ercolani and Producer Augusto Caminito (17 mins), Massimo Iacobis (son of Sergio Iacobis who was right hand man to Caminito) (19 mins), Cinematographer Giuseppe Pinori (19 mins), actor Giovanni De Nava (22 mins), actress Geretta Geretta (25 mins)

Video Essay by Rachel Nisbet (21 mins) and a featurette by Eugenio Ercolani

Reverse sleeve featuring original Italian Poster

Limited edition also gets rigid slipcase with artwork by Sean Longmore, Artcard and a 40 page booklet with writing by Ercolani, Gina Giacomo Petrone, Nanni Cobretti and Tim Murray