Discopath

This coming together of 1970s disco and horror is an enjoyable oddball genre blending, fun while it lasts but ultimately too niche to make much of an impact, unless with horror fans. The film, which had its world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, is likely to feature on home entertainment as well as proving a popular late night programming slot at other genre festivals.

The pleasure of Discopath – a great title in itself – is more in the style and recreation (both in terms of sound and vision) of the late 1970s then it is in the knowingly over-the-top giallo-style splatter effects.

When Duane Lewis (Jeremie Earp-Lavergne), a shy and sexually inexperienced New Yorker, finds his homicidal tendencies triggered by the throbbing of disco out on the dance-floor at the Seventh Heaven club, he kills a young woman who had shown an interest in him. He decides to head to the more peaceful climes of Montreal where he takes on a new identity, works as a janitor at an all-girls school and wears protective hearing to try and block out the provocative music.

When two students strip down to their underwear to practice their kissing a dose of music drives him to distraction and soon he is killing them with shards of broken records and heading off on a rage that sees him kidnap one of their teachers. With cops hot on his tail – led by stoical NY detective Jack Stephens (Ivan Freud) – it is only a matter of time before he gets his comeuppance, handily at a funeral…where he happens to be dressed as a nun.

The pleasure of Discopath – a great title in itself – is more in the style and recreation (both in terms of sound and vision) of the late 1970s then it is in the knowingly over-the-top giallo-style splatter effects. Highpoints are John Londono’s impressive cinematography and Bruce Cameron’s moody and throbbing score, often used for pastiche as much as full-blooded horror.