Umbrella Entertainment gets a bloody case of stage fright in their Blu-ray of the Aussie slasher NIGHTMARES.

Believing her mother was being "hurt" by her lover, little girl Cathy (Jeanie Lamond, the director’s daughter) accidentally causes her death in a car crash on a stormswept night. She has since developed a fixation with broken glass (it also doesn’t help that after the accident, a hospital orderly tried to molest her so she slashed him in the face). Years later, neurotic (but hot) young American actress Helen (Jenny Neumann, HELL NIGHT) is looking for work in Sydney, Australia. She meets cute with soap actor Terry (Gary Sweet, THE DREAMING) who is looking to expand his range with a stage play, although director George Dalberg (Max Phipps, THE ROAD WARRIOR) thinks it more important he project his voice since his good looks and recognition from TV are sufficient qualifications.

Despite her inexperience, Helen wins the leading role in the play. Not soon after rehearsals begin, a killer wielding shards of glass starts slashing his way through the production. Helen starts suffering from bloody nightmares and is apparently being stalked by the now-grown Cathy. Not only does director George have to worry about his whittled down cast and crew, he is also being needled by vile critic Bennett Collingswood (John Michael Howson, FELICITY) who is ambiguous enough to suggest to both Helen and co-star Bruce (Edmund Pegge, THE WINDS OF WAR) that they put out in order to be favorably reviewed. Helen draws the ire of George and the others when she is the only one favorably reviewed after the preview screening, but will there be anyone left alive for opening night? Is Helen the killer? Or is it Cathy? Or… need I go on?

Despite its horribly-cropped VHS release from VidAmerica under the title STAGE FRIGHT (not to be confused with Michele Soavi’s film of the same title), NIGHTMARES does not seem to have been well-known among all but the most seasoned slasher viewers until its appearance in the Mark Hartley Ozploitation documentary NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (2008). Independently-produced by Lamond, NIGHTMARES is less slick than the Anthony Ginnane’s Australian Film Commission-funded productions. Inspired by Hitchcock’s PSYCHO as much as John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN, Lamond’s slasher effort is anything but subtle. From the killer’s high-heeled feet during an early murder of a couple (who inexplicably strip completely nude for a romp in an alley), we know the killer is a woman. Although Terry overhears Helen arguing with Cathy in her apartment, even the audience at the time of the film’s release must have been way ahead of anyone “in” the film.

There are long soapy stretches between the killings with bickering actors as well as Terry and Helen’s sexually-frustrated relationship. A bit where a superstitious actress attacks Terry and blames him for the murder of one of the crew members because he "whistled" in the theater seems far-fetched unless you have worked with stage actors. One of the first Australian films to use the Steadicam (LADY STAY DEAD was another) – HALLOWEEN used the heavier Panaglide rig – Lamond does not restrict its use to killer POV shots. The Steadicam not only follows and leads actors around in long takes, it also prowls the theater endlessly even when killings are not imminent. The murders, however, are very grisly even though the make-up effects are crude (the performances, editing, and Australian regular composer Brian May’s string score help make the slashings look more painful). One murder’s liberal displays of bare female flesh and pouring blood (in the rain) probably did not go over well with censors in some countries. Being an early eighties Australian picture by a sexploitation film director, there is also fairly copious displays of nudity (male and female) and sex scenes that linger longer than those in American slasher counterparts.

Co-writer/editor Colin Eggleston, who directed the Aussie horror masterpiece LONG WEEKEND, also served as uncredited director for a couple sequences (including one slasher set-piece) since Lamond was directing the dreadful sexploitation pic PACIFIC BANANA back-to-back with NIGHTMARES. Eggleston’s wife and frequent acting collaborator Briony Behets (who also appeared in his LONG WEEKEND and CASSANDRA, as well as Terry Bourke’s dialogue-less slasher NIGHT OF FEAR) plays the stage manager who is on the receiving end of a false scare and a prolonged stalk and slash sequence. Effects artist Conrad Rothmann was brought over from America to work on Richard Franklin’s PATRICK, but he also worked on THIRST and HARLEQUIN as well as Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN back in the States.

Neumann was the nominal American star required for the film’s exportability, even though she was not well known, having only previously taken the lead in MISTRESS OF THE APES. Neumann would go on to play the sorority girl who loses her head in Tom DeSimone’s HELL NIGHT. She had a role in the TV movie V and appearances in THE DUKES OF HAZZARD and BJ AND THE BEAR, but her last screen credit is 1987’s THE DELOS ADVENTURE. Reportedly, she has since pursued a career in writing. Sweet was relatively unknown at the time, but has gone on to be a popular TV actor with memorable roles in the TV movie BLUE MURDER and various Australian TV series. Although he has a showier role here, Phipps will be best remembered by fans of Aussie horror for his role in Simon Wincer’s odd vampire pic THIRST (1979) with Chantal Contouri (SNAPSHOT) and David Hemmings (HARLEQUIN). Although he is pretty creepy here, Howson was a popular children’s entertainer and writer (he contributed to the film’s story as well). Unlike the supporting cast of many American slasher films, most of the credited cast either had or went on to have fairly prolific resumes in television, including Pegge, Behets, Nina Landes (KOMODO), and Sue Jones (who had a ten year sting on the Australian soap NEIGHBOURS among other works).

It was a long time between the cropped tape releases and Umbrella Entertainment's 2011 anamorphic widescreen DVD which was followed up by a domestic release from Severin. While the DVD was framed at a very wide 2.52:1, the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen Blu-ray crops the periphery ever so slightly while maintaining compositional balance (this is especially evident in shots with symmetrical elements on either side of the frame like shots of the stage down the central walkway flanked by seats). The greater resolution reveals that a lot of the low light shots indeed have very shallow depth of field – which explains some extreme lens flaring sometimes used to stylistic effect – but the in-focus elements including facial features, hair, bare flesh, and slashed prosthetic skin do reveal an uptick in detail over the DVD edition, along with adding a more tactile quality to the rundown locations and the weightless roving camera. It is now apparent that the final shot of the film is actually an alternate take and angle from a scene earlier in the film. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is forceful when it comes to the score and delivers the dialogue and breaking glass sounds clearly, and optional English HoH subtitles are included.

While Umbrella's original DVD featured only a short interview with director John Lamond and a trailer reel of his films, Severin commissioned an audio commentary with Lamond and Ozploitation documentary NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD director Mark Hartley for their DVD that is ported over here. Hartley is an energetic contributor while Lamond is not always easy to understand with his thick Aussie accent. He mentions that Debra Feuer, who was dating Mickey Rourke at the time, was initially cast in the lead but pulled out, and is more diplomatic in his remarks about Neumann's performance than Hartley. He also reveals that one of the actresses broke her angle during the scene where she was being chased around the theater by the killer, and was actually seated during the close-up shots of her struggling with the killer. Lamond mentions the time-saving benefits of using the Steadicam (including covering the bloody murder-in-the-rain sequence in one take rather than several angles). Hartley points out that Lamond cast actual actors (many of whom were recognizable from television at the time) rather than models even for the small undress and die roles.

New to the Blu-ray is a trio of extended interviews with director Lamond, actress Landes, and cinematographer Wapshott (28:06) from Hartley's NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD documentary. Lamond indirectly observes that the film was more in the slasher mold as a HALLOWEEN knockoff than FRIDAY THE 13TH which had not been released yet, taking advantage of the 10BA law that allowed private investors to claim 150% tax concession on their investment, allowing for more freedom in making films than the film commissions who were concerned with Australian cultural "purity" while also noting that a lot of garbage was made before the government put their foot down. He recalls getting a check by presenting a copy of the screenplay for THE EXORCIST with a different title page, working out the script with Eggleston and Howson, and his feelings about the degree of explicit sex and violence in the film. Landes recalls reading the script and picking out the one role of a female who does not strip and have sex before getting killed, breaking her ankle during the shoot, and her feelings about the horror films she has done in comparison to the more serious dramatic films. Also new to the Blu-ray are a selection of deleted scenes (9:04) culled from a VHS tape of an earlier edit of the film, which consists mainly of the play rehearsal scenes and some short scene extensions.