"Nightmares" is a dire, tedious and dirty attempt at a slasher movie that can't even be bothered with a twist in the tail.

The only thing - absolutely the only thing - that you'll remember about this movie is the sex. It has more of that than probably any slasher movie I've seen, and it's quite graphic, including a close up shot of a man's hand mauling a woman's pudenda.

Aside from this nothing in the movie connects because it is so stupid and absurd. The 'action' is set around a play where people keep getting murdered. All of the killings happen from POV shots except for when the killer raises the murder weapon - a shard of glass - in the air. More than once they kill their victims two at a time, so why isn't there any attempt to fight back? They scream, recoil, and get slashed up. Blood goes everywhere, but the killings are not particularly graphic. The budget went on actors willing to get naked, it seems, and allowed no room for visible wounds, so all we end up with is fake blood smeared on naked bodies.

I could hardly wait for this movie to be over, so I contemplated things like how the play could continue while its cast of only five people is already missing two actors, at least one of which has been discovered murdered in the theatre itself. The effort to find the killer is so lax that detectives allow the other cast and director into the crime scene so that they can watch from the seats as they go about their job of questioning one of the actors, and then disappear from the movie permanently so that subsequent performances can happen, minus the actor who got killed. Presumably the public has heard about the murder. Why are they so keen to enter the theatre where someone was brutally murdered yesterday and no one knows who did it?

This is the kind of movie where people take a long time to die from POV shots so that we can see them scream, get slashed up, run away, get chased, continue to get slashed up... but then other characters die immediately from one stab if they happen to be in a crowded place so that no one around can tell they've been killed. It's as though the filmmakers realise no one who watches such a movie will care enough to notice such inconsistencies and unrealities. Or perhaps they think the audience isn't bright enough to get it.

The existence of such a movie, therefore, is an insult to anyone who has to sit through it, on top of everything else.

F you are in a 1980's slasher movie and have kids, never let them see you have sex. Chances are, you are either going to die or they are going to grow up to be complete maniacs. Possibly both!

Cathy (Jenny Neumann, Hell Night) is one of those kids. When she was little, she caught her mom having sex in a really weird position that didn't look plausible. And then, her mom's boyfriend was making out with her while they drove in the car. She tried to get them to stop. However, she caused her mother's death in a car crash, with a piece of glass ending up in her throat.

Sixten years later and Cathy has become Helen. She's an actress in a play called Comedy of Blood, but everyone keeps getting killed with shards of glass. There's no real guesswork here - you can pretty much figure out the killer from the first few moments of the movie.

All I have to recommend this movie on is that Brian May did the soundtrack and that it is also called Stagefright, but you'd be much better off watching the Soavi film of the same name. It's so much better that at the end of this movie, I kept wondering, "Why am I not watching the real Stagefright?"

Sweet, but troubled and repressed theater actress Helen Selleck (a solid and charming performance by the lovely Jenny Neumann) is still suffering from severe trauma over the horrific death of her mother that she witnessed when she was a little girl. A series of brutal stabbing murders besets the production of the latest play Helen is acting in. Director John D. Lamond and writer Collin Eggleston whip up a delightfully raw and in-your-face wired cinematic cocktail of unflinchingly graphic violence along with equally explicit quasi-pornographic sex and abundant nudity that's so blithely crass and leering that one can't help but be amused and entertained by the cheeky audacity of this seedy enterprise; this honey's unapologetic wallowing in the slimy celluloid sewer and unwavering furious energy in turn give it a deliriously seamy buzz that's an absolute sordid joy to behold. Moreover, it's acted with real zest by an able cast, with especially stand-out work from Gary Sweet as earnest and likable soap opera thespian Terry Besanko, Nina Landis as snippy, but incompetent diva Judy, John Michael Howson as acerbic gay critic Bennett Collingswood, Max Phipps as tough and exacting director George D'ahlberg, Edmund Pegge as vain hack actor Bruce, and Briony Behets as blundering stage manager Angela. Gary Wapshott's sumptuous widescreen cinematography makes neat use of titled camera angles and smooth gliding Steadicam tracking shots. Brian May's spirited shuddery score keeps things bounding along. Clocking in at a tight 80 minutes, this movie never becomes dull or overstays its welcome. However, the killer's identity is thuddingly obvious from the get-go, which alas undermines the tension to a considerable degree. That quibble aside, this one overall sizes up as a tremendous amount of infectiously sleazy fun.