Made four years after the original 'Fame' film and with the TV-series still running, the setting of this Lucio Fulci directed 1984 giallo must have seemed like a great idea at the time. I can just imagine the pitch: “There’s a murderer loose in the Academy of Performing Arts and there are also LOTS of girls in skimpy outfits”. Cue plenty of dance scenes, leotards, leg warmers and a very 80’s score by Keith Emerson. There are some cracking alternate titles too, such as Slashdance and Giallo a Disco, both almost sounding too good to be true.
No doubt the producers hoped this would be a box office success because even though it’s slightly more graphic than your average thriller, the violence seems very restrained for a Fulci film. Especially when you compare it to his earlier giallo set in New York, the infamous New York Ripper. Not much is made of the New York setting, there’s a token shot of the NYC skyline every 15 minutes or so to remind us where we are but apart from that most of the film is shot at a soundstage. Apart from Karlatos and Lovelock the cast also includes Christian Borromeo (Tenebrae) and Al Cliver in a cameo but apart from Cosimo Cinieri as Lieutenant Borges, there really isn’t anybody whose performance stands out. Nobody would call this a great film; most wouldn’t even call it good. There’s some gut-wrenchingly bad Fame-inspired dialogue “Success doesn’t come easy, you got to pay for it. You’ve got to grit your teeth and dance, even when a friend dies...” and some truly hilarious but repetitive dancing but I found this strangely entertaining in spite of all this. It’s certainly a lot more entertaining than most of Fulcis later directorial efforts.

Peter