This movie is so right up my alley, I should have been called Kate’s Movie. But it isn’t. It’s called Stage Fright. I can’t even. It has everything I love: Theater. Summer camp. Meatloaf with a mustache. Circular saws. Spontaneous singing. Spontaneous killi–oh wait, I don’t love that.
The premise is fairly simple: Woman with twins is the star of a Broadway musical that is, but not really is, Phantom of the Opera, gets murdered on opening night. 10 years later, the producer decides to revive the show (called Haunting of the Opera, in order to keep this movie budget at $3500). Except instead of Broadway, he revives it at an upstate theater camp (read: haven for miscreants, nerds, dorks, fairies, geeks, weirdos, creepers, dingbats, lispers, hot 27 year olds who pretend they are teenagers, fedora wearing rapists, etc). Of course, this invites back some bad feelings, and equally bad murdering.
The twins of the woman (played by Minnie Driver) are now ten years older and working at the camp run by Meatloaf (his character has a real name, but I don’t care). Meatloaf was also the producer and boyfriend of Minnie Driver. Gross. The twins (a girl, Cam, and a boy, Buddy) are the cooks at the camp. And they also seem to be literally the only employees there. Already, I’m calling OSHA.
When Cam hears of the revival, she wants to audition. In order to do this, she basically promises sexual favors to the audition coach. And to the director. And the gay stage manager. And possibly the janitor. Everyone knows that what show business is: Sex and Singing.
She gets the part, but as a swing. For those who aren’t fully engrossed in theater, a “swing” is who is scheduled to perform your part on your off-nights. Cam is quite good at the lead (legacy, since her mom originated it), but it is a basically a competition between the two girls (Cam and Liz) as to whom will open the show. Actually, it’s more of a competition of who can sleep with the director first. As if every male figure at this camp wasn’t already turned gay and fabulous.
Fast forward to the night before opening night, when the fedora wearing rapist director is delightfully killed with theater equipment. If any of you out there hate “theater kids,” you will be spinning over this movie. So much death in clever theater ways. Since Meatloaf is both in debt and also a greedy mo-fo, he tells everyone the show must go on. Which proves both deadly and ill-conceived, since the kids seem to die at important stage entrances.
In the end we find out the killer is actually Buddy, Cam’s twin brother and son of the murdered actress. He was seeking out revenge on Meatloaf for being the one to kill his mother because she was cheating on him. However, Buddy kills with circular saw blades that he carves finger holes in. This is ridiculous. What camp has this many circular saws that they wouldn’t notice 12 of the blades missing over the course of a summer? Home Depot probably loves serial killers. There’s probably a rewards card for them.
My internal monologue still stands – “Theater people are so fucking dramatic. They make me want to set myself on fire.”
Lower It Up 