Gira sangrienta

My review was written after watching a Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

Made in 1980, "Terror on Tour" is a theatrically unreleased stab and slash feature film currently available to home video users. Uninvolving programmer has little to offer horror addicts.

Premise has a hard-rock group the Clowns (wearing makeup reminiscent of Kiss) doing a Grand Guignol-style live act (similar to such trendsetters as Alice Cooper), caught up in a murder investigation when someone wearing their makeups starts stabbing girls for real. The victims are prostitutes, and script rather tediously keeps hammering away at the relationship between drugs, rock music and violence. Filmmakers even have the temerity to end on a note imploring the audience to stop displaying its enthusiasm for violent, "sick" entertainment.

Belying its ile, low-budget feature has no tour, with barely any exterior scenes and the group rooted in one spot. Only a handful of extras appear in the concert footage. Performing is dull, though lovely Lisa Rodriquez has a nice little role as a prostie working undercover for the police. Identity of the killer is obvious early on by the process of elimination.

Biggest surprise is absence of extreme gore, since "Tour" was directed by Don Edmonds, whose two "Ilsa" gore spectaculars of a decade ago have become cult favorites. He may have cleaned up his act, but the result is a failure to meet the minimum requirements of the exploitation genre.