Murder Rock
Candice Norman operates the hottest dance academy in town, with hoards of hopefuls dying to be admitted, maybe literally.
Shortly after a trio of new students are accepted into Candice’s tutelage, a young female pupil is found murdered on campus, stabbed through the heart with a long pin. With the backbiting staff and students alike all rendered possible suspects, Candice is also plagued by haunting dreams involving a sinister man.
\When Candice spots this man's face on a billboard, she decides to track him down, while yet another rising dance starlet winds up with a punctured heart. Is this handsome stranger as dangerous as the man in her dreams? Could a bloodthirsty maniac from outside the school be preying upon the dancers? Or has the intense competition between dancers and staff turned one of them into a depraved killer? And how does Candice herself factor into this shocking mystery?
Director Lucio Fulci’s (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond) final giallo and also his final film set in New York City, MURDEROCK (Murderock - Uccide a passo di danza), is amongst the maestro's last truly lavish productions, boasting stylized dance numbers (scored by legendary musician Keith Emerson) and surreal dream sequences between its labyrinthine mystery and gruesome killings.
ABOUT JANUARY GIALLO:
"Every January, we like to pour ourselves a glass of J&B whiskey, sharpen our straight razor and slip on those black gloves to celebrate our favorite horror sub-genre, the Giallo. For those of you who don’t know, a Giallo is Italy’s answer to murder mysteries and thrillers that was kicked off by Mario Bava with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (aka Evil Eye) in the early sixties. While filmmakers like Umberto Lenzi made some excellent Giallos in the late sixties/early seventies such as Orgasmo and Knife of Ice, the sub-genre became popularized by Dario Argento with The Girl with Crystal Plumage . Throughout the seventies, Argento along with Sergio Martino, Lucio Fulci, Luciano Ercoli, Aldo Lado and many more made several visually stunning and viscerally violent cinematic excursions. The word Gialllo means ‘yellow’ in Italian, which was the color of the pulp and crime books that some Giallo took inspiration from. Although stylistically, the Giallo shares DNA with the German Krimi Films, the sub-genre took some wild turns mingling with occult, Gothic horror, Poliziotteschi, and psychedelia elements that created many unique variations." - Cinematic Void