Stage Fright (1950) Blu-ray Review • Home Theater Forum hometheaterforum.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hometheaterforum.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Last modified on Tue 16 Mar 2021 02.02 EDT
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in his box at the theatre, and the killer’s bid to escape across the stage, is recreated in a whirlwind sequence in DW Griffith’s 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation. The killing of Lincoln, by the actor John Wilkes Booth, is the most famous murder in a theatre but several other films have since built mysteries around deadly crimes committed before a captive audience. Paul Leni’s dazzling The Last Warning (1928) concerns a Broadway actor’s on-stage death. In the British movie Murder at the Windmill (1949), directed by former stage actor Val Guest, a punter is killed during a burlesque show; his body is discovered along with a pipe, an umbrella and a pair of kippers when the theatre is being cleaned.