Murder Rock is an older Fulci movie with a “newer” kind of feel. Take out the zombies and eye impalings and replace them with leotards and terrible dance/disco music. A sizable part of this movie’s budget went to the soundtrack and that’s too bad, ‘cause it’s terrible. To be fair, the movie is over 20 years old and takes place in a dance studio, so the terrible music may be appropriate, albeit undesirable.

Anyway, the movie goes like this. Members of a dance troupe are competing for three positions in a new musical that is sure to slingshot their careers. Competition is fierce. So much, that people end up dying. The motive of this killer however isn’t really known. All the cops can figure out is that the killer has a trademark “pin through the heart (via the boob)” type murder style. The rest of the movie involves figuring out whodunnit.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a WTF or two. You knew it was coming. The first is the space age dance studio that has an automated voice and countdown of when the place is shutting down. All the lights slowly blink on and off as an additional warning. These are the exact precautions I would expect to see when a nuclear meltdown occurs, but not at an effing dance studio!

Here’s another one. This girl is having a dream of somebody killing her, just like the other girls are getting killed. The face of the killer looks familiar to her. After she awakes, she scours the city (New York) trying to find the man. After she finds him and breaks into his room and converses with him, she starts dating him! WTF?

Also, there is this mulligan “false killer” thing that happened that I still don’t understand. It’s like this person wasn’t really the killer, nor had she committed any prior crimes, but she was going to kill this one person but changed her mind. I’m confused. It doesn’t matter.

This is not one of Lucio’s better films. It’s a pretty typical murder mystery. It is shot quite well however and has Fulci’s usual stylings. I’m just not a big slasher fan. The acting is good and everybody does their jobs. Olga Karlatos returns from her legendary “Zombie” eye impalement and does a wonderful job as the lead role of dance instructor. Lots of nudity of the boob variety round this movie out. Practically no gore, to my horror however.

To summarize, kinda middle-of-the-road Fulci fare. Watch if you are a fan of the man, or of “Flashdance“. I give this movie 5 out of 10 extra dvd’s that have nothing but interviews and stuff, but I managed to watch the whole damn thing, despite the movie’s mediocrity.