Murder Rock: Dancing Death

During the era of Staying Alive, A Chorus Line, and All That Jazz, Fulci shoots dancers in aerobics gear (think Jane Fonda’s Workout or Olivia Newton John’s Let’s Get Physical) giving their best rehearsal Fosse, but something about this seems so anti-Fulci. This movie pisses a lot of Fulci fans off because it is so different than City of the Living Dead (Gates of Hell) or House by the Cemetery. The catalyst for the murders that take place is a contest where three of the best dancers in a dedicated group will be selected to star in a big production. To weed out the competition, a killer will eliminate those that pose a threat to his/her stardom.
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 Lucio Fulci sure loved New York City, didn’t he? I think this is evident especially in Murder Rock: Dancing Death where he opens his film shooting the city from its outskirts, capturing the buildings, then going within the city as breakdancers let loose on the dance floor. Basically, I guess he shoots this in secret then fakes Rome as NYC for the majority of the rest of his film.

 Fulci Loves The Big Apple

  I personally think Murder Rock is a giallo. A return to the genre, so to speak, using the 80s era dance craze as a template to feature psychotic killings towards dancers, Fulci’s Murder Rock to me is every bit the giallo in that it features a motive and characters sweating and tiring themselves out with a destiny in their grasp…why not eliminate those that might stand in your way? Truthfully this is Agatha Christie dressed up in a gratuitous Fulci way that has a ruthless taskmaster demanding excellence from her students, having them gruelingly dancing hours on end in their school, a dream attainable to them. When you have a promising career your starving for, right in front of you and there for the taking, someone hungry enough might just kill for such an opportunity. You remove the obstacle—talent and skill that poses a threat—and you are right there closer to the dream.

Fulci has two particular visual fixations. He uses a lot of lights going on and off and we see many rooms with a number of mirrors. Notice the school dance studio when Susan is murdered, the light bulb sounds off before going off. Later, upon her crime scene as detectives survey the damage and conduct their investigation, lights are set up (for whatever reason, I’m not sure) near the body, sound off before going off. Mirrors are everywhere, casting shadowy reflections or showing silhouettes and characters when entering rooms or waking up from a nightmare.

Fulci and The Light

Fulci and The Mirror

While dancing, lights and mirrors are very prevalent; Fulci depends on them (along with his customary close-ups and use of zoom for facial shots) as part of his style and aesthetic. His set-ups for his actors in scenes seem meticulous; it seemed important for him to get as much out of each location where characters face possible doom or characters in dance. Notice a certain dance where Janice dances solo in a bar (probably to make extra cash), with Fulci shooting her at all sorts of angles (with a mechanical rainfall and using the darkened bar, stage, and mood lighting in every way possible).

 To me, while Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is my choice for his best film, I think Murder Rock is visually his most arresting. I wanted not just to mention it in word but provide examples. Foreground/background, staged lighting, wide-screen composition, tight-impacting shots; for me, Murder Rock is Fulci at his most inspired. The 80s seems to be when Fulci was working on all cylinders, not afraid at taking on every sort of genre, with lots of variety in terms of tone, material, violence, and characterization.  I have a fondness for Murder Rock for his directorial touches, although his vocal followers consider this one of his worst films. Of course, I also enjoy Manhattan Baby so my opinion on Fulci isn’t the least bit trustworthy. I just appreciate craft when I see it.

While Fulci tried to give his gore fans what they so yearned for, I preferred his artistic side where he could prove himself beyond just staging scenes where people died horribly. The Beyond, to me, is as close as he could come to achieving both on a gruesome level and still develop awe-inspiring shots that linger on the mind (that doozy of a final image, in particular has left many awestruck). I just get this eye candy effect all throughout Murder Rock. It visually pleases me, because I have always enjoyed establishing shots that cover the character and his/her surroundings..it really is time, place, and person that can make or break a scene; if captured effectively, so much can remain and impress.
I noticed that one of this film’s titles in Europe was Slashdance. I found this rather humorous. Not necessarily fitting because a pin and chloroform are used instead a knife.

I felt as I said before that Murder Rock is a giallo. You have a killer breathing heavy across the phone when he calls future victims, wearing black gloves, a cloth with chloroform, surprising them before putting them to sleep, eventually using a pin (with a decorative head) to stick near (and through) the breast. This is really just a tame precursor to Fulci’s savage New York Ripper. NYR is definitely a different blog review altogether!

Ray Lovelock has the role of George Webb, a struggling actor and advertising model who conveniently has a bottle of chloroform and a flashy hat pin similar to the murder weapon used against the subdued victims of this film stuffed in the front drawer Candice discovered by much to her horror (she was looking for cigarettes, another interesting coincidence). Lovelock has that actor that screams out from the screen “He’s the one! He looks guilty!” upon his very first scene. This means he’s just a ruse, a “script façade”, the one who is cast immediately as the killer so it’s obvious he isn’t. Candice, in a strange twist of fate that propels her into potential danger, sees Lovelock in a nightmare following behind her in slo-mo with that pin and black gloves. His face is on a billboard, inspiring her to find him. She falls in love with him while also fearing him. It is certainly, to me, a rather odd plot development. When she finds the bottle and pin in his drawer, it begs to question how stupid Candice must be to have entered any form of a relationship with him. Lovelock is best known for The Last House on the Beach and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, and his looks have a lot to do with that. His heathen in Last House is atypical because of his pretty boy looks and so it isn’t farfetched for him in the role of an advertising model boozing it up in Murder Rock. 

But, the minute details—a giallo standard—are here such as the significance of the hair pin and how a paralyzed kid in a wheelchair, hidden away in the dark upstairs photographing dancer Jill (having a secret affair with a powerful fixture at the school, Gibson, a nervy dirty old man with a penchant for the student girls) lends the investigation a much needed shot in the arm after the killer arrives to put her down. While the photograph of the killer only shows his wearing an Armani designer jacket, pin in hand of course, it rules out a suspect and gives the detectives a little bit to go on. There’s even the false alarm and red herrings (the heroine is the dance teacher of the school studio, who is about to get the same treatment as her students when the one using the chloroform and pin chickens out, unable to match the kill-pattern of the real psychopath; Gibson is the numero uno suspect after he flees Jill’s apartment upon finding her fresh corpse with cops in the area spotting him, the photograph exonerating him).

Olga Karlatos gets the starring role and her face is mostly riddled with fear, anxiety, concern, and distrust. She, for the opening of the film, is really a taskmaster expecting her kids to work their asses to the bone, sweating out that competitive spirit until they are soaked and breathing hard. Unlike other films regarding dancers trying to secure a spot in a major show, Murder Rock doesn’t have a lot of infighting, backbiting, backstabbing, cat fighting, or name-calling.

While I’m no dance-the-night-away kind of guy—certainly not an expert in what is considered bad or swell dancing—the work of the dancers in Murder Rock give me the giggles. Let’s face it: Fulci isn’t Fosse, although I admire the effort, the attempt. He tries for something quite different at least. Karlatos was once a dancer until a tragedy took a future in showbiz from her; this is important in the film, although it sort of is addressed at the end, instead of being a focus of the story earlier on. Another reason I consider this a giallo: too often, the dénouement seems dreamed up out of the blue, at the last minute. Part of the genre’s charm to me is this constant of the giallo.

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I can't imagine how viewers--who had perhaps just watched Zombie Flesh Eaters or The New York Ripper--would have responded to a group getting jiggy with it Flashdance style at the beginning of Murder Rock. Maybe jaws making a loud thud to the floor or frozen expressions of befuddlement at what they were seeing. You can't say Fulci wasn't afraid to venture out of his comfort zone. He still gives us plenty of the tropes associated with the giallo, such as shirts ripped open, exposing breasts as a hat pin in hand (with a lion's head) methodically approaches flesh. The setting of a dance studio producing a nutcase may not exactly appeal to the common Fulci fan, but I have to admit that visually, this is pleasing to my eye and I like how Fulci shoots NYC, getting all he can before getting caught ("stealing shots", if you will). There's a small group who like Murder Rock, but typically this film is found at the bottom of fan lists as a major disappointment. It isn't savage enough, told in a more linear way without the excess or random weird shit like a character vomiting up her insides or zombies disappearing like ghosts.