Sunday Bloody Sunday: ‘Peephole Death’ From ‘Opera’ (1987)

Yep, back to back weeks of Dario Argento movies!  Last week on Sunday Bloody Sunday we had the arm chop from Tenebre.  And this week it’s all about a bullet through a peephole (that would be a good name for a song btw) from Mr. Argento’s 1987 underrated giallo, Opera.

I’m sure a lot of you out there have had some peephole anxiety in the past.  You get a knock on the door, but before you open it – you put your peeper up to the peephole to get a peak at who it is.  The whole fisheye lens can be deceiving and frustrating because it can be hard to get a good look at who’s on the other side.  Unfortunately for Mira (Daria Nicolodi) in Opera, she may have spent a little too much time on peephole patrol.  Without spoiling her ridiculous but entertaining death, I’ll let you watch it below to fully enjoy it:

Worst Axe In A Horror Movie Ever: Stage Fright (1987)

Recently, I finally sat down and watched the 1987 Italian slasher flick, Stage Fright.  And overall, it pretty much lived up to all of the expectations I had about a horror movie with a killer wearing a giant furry owl head when stalking his brain-challenged victims.

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Now let’s talk axes for a minute.  I really had to refrain from throwing in a ‘axe to grind’ pun by the way.  But anyway, towards the end of Stage Fright, our final girl Alice (Barbara Cupisti) is on the run from our killer owl and ends up in the rafters above the stage.  After knocking him down, to where he latches on to cable and tries to climb back up, she grabs his axe and starts to go to work on that cable to knock him down:

Ok.  I realize that the particular axe that Alice was swinging had recently been used to chop off someone’s head.  So maybe….just maybe, that activity dulled it a little to where she couldn’t cut through that cable with less than 20 attempts.  That’s right.  If you played along at home while watching the video and counted, it took 20 swings of that sharp axe to get through that cable and drop owl face like a sack of potatoes to the ground.

I’m sorry, but I can’t even use the whole “Oh, she’s a girl so she’s not as strong” defense on this one, because it’s an AXE.  They use these to cut down trees for God’s sake!  After the seventh attempt, the credits should have been rolling and Alice should have been enjoying a tasty beverage somewhere.  So because of that, I have to award the axe in Stage Fright as the Worst Axe In A Horror Movie Ever!  Somewhere, Paul Bunyan is sobbing.