Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 10 at 7:00 PM at The Sie Film Center in Denver. You can get tickets here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Lucio Fulci wanted to make a giallo. But then Flashdance happened, and the producers knew Keith Emerson (yes, the Keith Emerson from Emerson Lake and Palmer), and the result was…Murder Rock! Or Murder-Rock: Dancing Death! Or Slashdance! Or The Demon Is Loose!

We start at the Arts for the Living Center in New York, where Candice (Olga Karlatos, the only actress to be in both Zombie 2 and Purple Rain)  watches Margie (Geretta Giancarlo from Demons) choreograph dancers for an upcoming talent agent visit. Only three girls will be selected, so they all need to be more perfect.

That night, Susan, one of the dancers, is murdered in the locker room. First, she is chloroformed. Then, as if Fulci had simply waited too long for something violent to happen, a giant hatpin is inserted into her breast. I imagine Lucio sitting in his director’s chair, saying, “Why do I have to show all these pretty girls in leotards when everyone just wants to see me rip out one of their eyeballs?”

Lieutenant Borges (Cosimo Cinieri, The New York Ripper) and Professor Davis (Giuseppe Mannajuolo). Show up to investigate, choosing Candice, the head of the academy, Dick Gibson (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) and Susan’s boyfriend.

We find Candice at her apartment, where Dick shows up to tell her that he isn’t sleeping with any of the students. Anyone who tells you this is pretty much telling you that they are totally sleeping with the students. The studio DJ also calls her to update her on the murder.

Back at the school, everyone is back to their routine, which upsets Dick, who tells the cops about the rivalries between the dancers. Later that night —after we see her on stage by herself, showing off for the crowd—he shows up at her place, wanting to talk. She finds a photo of him with Susan, but when she turns to see him, he is gone. Worse, her bird is dead, stabbed by a hairpin. And soon, so is she, as a hairpin is thrust into her heart.

But what of Candice? Well, she’s having nightmares of the killer, who she sees chasing her with the long hairpin. She sees his photo on a billboard and tracks him down. The man is George Webb (Ray Lovelock, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue), who isn’t the handsome model in the ads any longer. He’s now a mess, so she runs from him, leaving her purse in his room.

What would a giallo — or a Fulci movie — be without a red herring? It comes in the form of Bart, a dancer who confesses to the murders because Susan was crazy and Janice was Hispanic (but in a much more racist way). Borges believes that he isn’t the killer, but when George comes to the Academy to return Candice’s purse, Dick tells the cop that that’s their man.

At lunch, Candice tells George about how her dancing career ended after a hit-and-run accident with a motorcyclist. Now, she can only be a teacher. And she’s not convinced that George is on the up and up, as she learns from a talent agent that George once had an affair with a younger girl who died.

Oh yeah — and Margie attacks Candice just like the killer, but Dick saves her.

The killing doesn’t stop, though. Jill is killed while Molly, a girl in a wheelchair, takes photos of her. Molly tries to take pictures, but the killer escapes. Dick tries to run away, but he’s arrested. But again, the killing doesn’t stop. Gloria is murdered in the locker room with the trademark hairpin.

It all leads to Candice going back to George’s hotel room, where she finds the murder weapon. She runs away, and George tries to see her, but she’s at the police station, telling the Lieutenant, who agrees to meet her at the Academy.

Ready for the big reveal? When she gets there, she sees a video of every dancer who has died, leaving her screaming their names. George appears with the murder weapon and asks why she set him up. She responds that she knew he was the hit-and-run driver who cost her so much, and that she killed the girls because of her jealousy of them. They had the life she would never know and had to die…and he has to pay for all he has done to her. She grabs the murder weapon and kills herself with it, pushing the weapon into George’s hand. The police arrive, but they already knew she was the killer, thanks to the buttons on the killer’s jacket being on the left side and Candice knowing details about the murders that they never made public.

That’s the plot, but please imagine that there is a leotard-clad dance-off every ten minutes or so.

Murder Rock was part of a planned trilogy entitled “Trilogia della musica” and would have been followed by Killer Samba and Thrilling Blues, but Fulci became ill for two years and abandoned the project.

This film looks gorgeous! It has some stunning shots of the killer coming at the camera, and while there is some blood, it isn’t at the expense of the story. I literally expected nothing and was rewarded with a lot of fun. Your ability to enjoy flashdancing and 80s outfits may, however, impact your enjoyment of this film!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bachelor Party was on USA Up All Night on September 24, 1994; May 12 and November 25, 1995.

Directed by Neal Israel, who co-wrote it with Pat Proft, this was a formative movie in my teenage years. Probably yours, as well. I mean, who doesn’t remember Nick the Dick?

Rick Gassko (Tom Hanks) has finally decided to settle down with his girlfriend Debbie Thompson (Tawny Kitean), which leads his friends to plan one last night to look back on when Rick is tied down. Led by Jay O’Neill (Adrien Zmed), they create a party that even ends up killing a mule. This was the kind of party I thought I would go to when I grew up. I can tell you have never been to a single party that has this level of chaos.

Can Rick have fun while avoiding his new in-laws (George Grizzard and Barbara Stuart)? Will his friend Brad (Bradford Bancroft) kill himself? How good is Michael Dudikoff at comedy? Did you kickstart puberty when Monique Gabrielle arrived?

At the end of the movie, there’s a 3D film festival playing. There are some real films — House of Wax, Dial M for Murder and Comin’ at Ya! plus these fakes: Syborg, The Bug, Boulxi Blood Bath, Chainsaw Child, Hell House, Battle for Berkely, Bat Beast, Zenobia, Pedestrian Bondage, Glendale Girls Go Beserk, Zulu, Watts Wilderness, Richard III, Death Cult Bar-Mitsva and Sioux City.

I must confess that I watched this movie every time it aired. It actually has a heart and isn’t just all nudity, as it turns out.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Footloose was on USA Up All Night on September 15 and December 23, 1995.

Herbert Ross (The Owl and the Pussycat, Steel Magnolias) is directing, Dean Pitchford (the co-writer of “You Should Hear How She Talks About You”) is writing, and America is loving it. Imagine — a town where no music is allowed. How can it be! How could a lack of the First Amendment ever happen in our country?

Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) and his mother Ethel (Frances Lee McCain) have come from Chicago to Bomont, Utah. Here, Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) runs the town, keeping kids like Willard (Chris Penn), Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker), Woody (John Laughlin), Lulu (Lynne Marta) and his own daughter Ariel (Lori Singer) from dancing.

Ariel’s brother died after a night of drinking and dancing, which is how we got here. So can this city kid come to town and change it all? Of course.

This was almost a Michael Cimino movie, but even after Heaven’s Gate, he had considerable demands. There’s also a world where Tom Cruise or Christopher Atkins was the lead, while Madonna, Haviland Morris, Valerie Bertinelli or Jennifer Jason Leigh would be the love interest.

This is loosely based on a real-life movie story. The town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, had no dancing since its founding. Rev. F. R. Johnson said, “No good has ever come from a dance. If you have a dance, somebody will crash it, and they’ll be looking for only two things — women and booze. When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another.” In 1980, the students of Elmore City’s high school made national news when they requested permission to hold a junior prom. The school board was tied at 2–2 when President Raymond Lee said, “Let ’em dance.”

If you were alive when this came out — I was 12 — you know the songs: “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins, “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” by Deniece Williams, “Almost Paradise” by Heart’s Ann Wilson and Loverboy’s Mike Reno, “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler, and so many more. Writer Dean Pitchford did more than the script. He also co-wrote the songs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bedroom Eyes was on USA Up All Night on January 6, 1996 and February 1 and September 27, 1997.

If you enjoy Canadian horror, then you know who William Fruet is, the maker of Death Weekend (released here as The House By the Lake), Cries In the Night (better known as Funeral Home), redneck rampage film Trapped (AKA Baker County U.S.A.), Spasms and the kinda-sorta Alien by way of animal experimentation oddity Blue Monkey.

This time, he’s taking on the genre of adult thriller, which by 1984 is kind of what giallo was leaning toward and then would completely become in the wake of Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. The ideas are the same — identity, secrets, sex, shame, violence — but it’s missing the great music and the fashion for the most part.

If you’re nostalgic for a film that aired on USA Up All Night, this movie is for you. This is the type of universe where a peeping tom is the hero, where a psychologist can see past his perversion — or encourage it — to see the man he is inside and where every other woman is evil.

This was, of course, followed by Bedroom Eyes II, which is way better because it has Wings Hauser, Veronica Hart and Linda Blair in the cast, as well as Chuck Vincent directing, and that movie also has no compunctions about feeling sweaty and filthy, while this one seems clean and wrapped up, like some of the 80s felt.

This one does get points for having its female antagonist repeatedly beat the protagonist up, including a slapstick bonk at the end as the police take her away.

One of the last films produced at Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers studio, this is the story of a poet named Yu (Patricia Ha, Nomad) who refuses to comply with the way that ladies should behave in the conservative time that she has been born into. She becomes a Taoist priestess so that she can do whatever she wishes, but can society allow her to love nomadic warrior Tsui Pok Hau (Alex Man) and her maid Lu Chiao (Lam Hoi-Ling)?

Directed by Eddie Ling-Ching Fong, this is more of an art film than exploitation, regardless of the title. It’s based on the life of Tang Dynasty poet Yu Xuanji and was Fong’s first film, with the original cut said to be almost three hours long.

Once she leaves the convent, Yu expands on how she feels about free love and falls for a rich man, Yung (Poon Chun-Wai). Yet Tsui Pok Hau is never far behind. Her love for him could doom them both.

I wasn’t expecting anything with this film and was really knocked out by its scope and just how incredible it looks. It’s definitely nothing like anything that Shaw Brothers put out. Well worth seeking out.

The 88 Films release of this film comes with four art cards, commentary by David West, a stills gallery, a trailer and a gorgeous slipcover with art by Justin Coffee. You can order it from MVD.