Scared to Death

source: Scared to Death

My review was written in December 1982 after a screening at Lyric theater on Manhattan's 42nd St. Made during the horror production boom of 1980, "Scared to Death" is an unusual amalgam of the standard Earthbound killer on the rampage format with many elements lifted from the sci-fi hit "Alien". Never trade-screened, this thriller has already played off and is reviewed here for the record. Picture is unrelated to Ovidio Assonitis's "Scared to Death", aka "There Was Once a Child", also shot in 1980. Monster on the loose in L. A. is a synthesized genetic organism, known as the Syngenor, the result of a genetic engineering experiment. While local police are searching for a maniac, it is the real killer, using its long tongue to live off its victims' spinal fluid. Picture works best in atmospheric chases through the storm sewers, a favorite haunt of monsters dating back to "Them" and "The Snow Creature" in the early 1950s. Filmmaker William Malone's self-designed creature is effective when glimpsed briefly, but looks like a man in a rubber suit when shown too fully in the final reels. Besides the careful "Alien" imitation regarding the monster's appearances and attacks, pic's climax for dealing with the beast is taken from "The Fly". Cast is okay, though little interest is created during the sluggish non-horror scenes. Credits are below par, with an adequate blowup from 16mm.

This film had a lot going for it, unfortunately, it has much more that doesn't. The basis and synopsis of the story are solid. It the old story of science trying to better mankind and force our evolution by genetic manipulation. As this is a horror flick you can guess the results are far from optimistic. What science gives the audience is an a-sexual beast with a penchant for killing and kidnapping humans. The lucky ones are dead. The cop assigned to the case wants to bring his old partner in on the situation. The partner, now a writer, wants no part of the investigation... until his girlfriend becomes a victim. Sounds good, doesn't it(?) Well, it is too good to be true. Writer and director William Malone and writer Robert Short meander all over the place. This wouldn't have been too bad if they had built up the characters is this time, but they don't. In all honesty, all of the characters are flat and unappealing. For most of the film, I wanted to slap the main character, Ted Lonergan. He is pretty obnoxious, at best. Malone then brings his meandering ways to the direction of the film. Add to this the slow pace and you get a yawn-fest. There are a couple of decent shots but not enough to renew my attention, which was drifting all over the place. The acting was below average. That isn't surprising though, as I stated above the characterisations are rubbish. The actors can only work with what they're given and how they are instructed. One good thing is the monster. The super-human is nicely designed and constructed. It definitely could strike fear into somebody. I even liked the tongue, which would slither out into the throats of its victims to impregnate them. Shame I couldn't get the idea out of my head that it had been stolen from Alien. It would have been better had the tongue moved faster and snaked more. Speaking of "borrowed" ideas the ending is right out of Terminator. I cannot recommend this to any horror fan out there. I don't want to be blamed for wasting your time, so do yourself a favour and stay away from this flick. Feel free to come on over and see where this film charts in my Absolute Horror list. You should, at least, be able to find something more interesting and entertaining to watch.

William Malone wanted to be a director and decided that a horror movie was the way to go. After all, he'd made monster masks at a factory so he could make the monster himself. And by that, I mean spend three months making an H. R. Giger clone. Then he sold his car, mortgaged his house and somehow got Rick Springfield to be in this, but he dropped out the night before shooting started, which feels like a total kayfabe story. This might seem like a slasher, but then you learn that the killer is drinking spinal fluid and this woman just shows up and says, "Oh, I worked at the lab where we made a creature named the Syngenor that lives off spine juice. And in case you wonder, the name means SYNthesized GENetic ORgansism." Yes, the very same Syngenor that Re-Animator villain David Gale goes absolutely full-on bonkers within. That's why when this movie was released to DVD, it got the new title Scared to Death: Syngenor. Malone would move on to make Creature, House on Haunted Hill, feardotcom and Parasomnia. If we let him make another movie, I really worry what the title will be. I have no idea who let him make a film again after feardotcom because not even my steady diet of Franco and Mattei could get me through that movie.

The year is 1981 and most people are making slasher movies, but SCARED TO DEATH is a twist on the serial killer, slasher type movie. Even though it has got to be the dumbest movie title ever. But the creature in the movie is cool and unique. The story is somewhat a-typical, but predictable doesn't always mean bad. All the jumps are all in the right place and all the kills are all in the right place. Basically it's pretty cool movie, once you overlook the stupid title. The characters are a little on the weak side, and the film quality could have been much better, even for the time period. But all and all the style of the movie, the look of the creature and the characters all make the movie worth while. I give SCARED TO DEATH 9 STARS.

Former detective turned private eye Ted Lonergan & his girlfriend / assistant Jennifer Stanton are approached by one of Ted's former colleagues, Detective Lou Capell, to help with investigating a rash of killings where the victims fall into a coma after being drained of their spinal fluids. Jennifer manages to find a lead when a genetic scientist calls her with information but is attacked by the killer & left in a coma. Ted & the scientist discover that the killings were the work of the Syngenor (an acronym for Synthesised Genetic Organism), a genetic cyborg creature that was created by a dead scientist & that has escaped from the laboratory & is lurking in the sewers in order to feed on human spinal fluid in order to survive. Believe it or not, Scared to Death is probably one of the very first ALIEN templaters to have come out in the 1980s, alongside other similar films such as THE INTRUDER WITHIN & the el bizarro British entry XTRO. The film was the debut of director William Malone, a makeup effects artist who has designed the mask of serial killer Michael Myers from the Halloween films whilst working at Don Post Studios. Malone raised $74,000 in order to make the film & co-wrote the story with another effects wizard, Robert Short. Scared to Death is an interesting film, although nowhere even near the stature of the original Alien – while the Syngenor looks a bit like a H.R. Giger creation, it still is kept to the shadows to disguise its shortcomings (although the creature's body suit looks quite impressive). The rest of the film is basically Alien melded with Friday the 13th – plenty of undressing girls & shenanigans going on in the dark. The idea of a genetic cyborg (a being made from synthetic DNA) is quite good – indeed the film's attempt at setting the template on Earth & providing a reasonable explanation for the monster's nature earns full marks for being innovative despite the ultra-low budget. The only problem being that Malone is nowhere even near the skill set & vision of Ridley Scott, with his handling frequently turning the film's pace into a hard slog & having no idea on how to create suspense. Still, it was one of the earliest Alien templaters & the Syngenor still looks cool, enough for a sequel-remake to come out a decade later.

I remember seeing the VHS box for this movie on the shelf in a video store when I was 5 years and thinking that it was terrifying. Who would want to be scared to death? Why would grown-ups willingly watch such a movie? This was back in the days when I thought that all of the monsters would come out of the boxes and haunt the video store after it was closed. Being locked in a video store was one of my worst nightmares. It was only when I got to my 20s and worked in a Blockbuster that I realized this wasn't accurate. The "plot" for this movie has a monster stalking people in cheap locations in Los Angeles and...doing something to them that gives them brain cancer. An ex-cop (who looks like a dorky Michael Bay who'd lose a fight with a wet paper bag) eventually investigates after his new girlfriend is molested by said ghoul. The V-A-S-T majority of this movie is made up of people wandering around, looking...just looking, wandering more, and more, "anyone there", looking, "hello?", and wandering in depressing, sparsely-lit sets. I don't know why William Malone edited the movie this way as it is 96 minutes long and could have been a far punchier 85-minute borefest. Malone went on to direct the slightly better Titan Find and then the far superior House on Haunted Hill, so he has talent, but not as a writer. Brain cancer-giving monsters? Really? I can handle silly science in my movies, but he clearly knows nothing about what he is attempting to tackle here. It sure ain't written by Michael Crichton. There's nothing here. Even the monster is a xenomorph rip-off with significantly less articulation that is apparently made out of cereal boxes and old tyres. It's played by a guy called Kermit! So... The print on Amazon has a high amount of damage, dirt, missing frames, and warps, along with faded, ruined colors, though this might be inherit to the naff photography. I'm sure a label like Vinegar Syndrome or Arrow could do a restoration, though they usually choose movies of some substance, of which this garbage has none. A sequel was made with higher production values, but why even bother?

I got this movie as I love watching horror films and I normally enjoy the horror of the past a lot more than the horror of today. This one though was just not what I was expecting. I had high hopes at the beginning when the film opened up and we are greeted with a point of view shot of the monster peeking in on a girl totally *. However, this would not be the norm in this film, and the cynical part of me thinks this scene was added in to spice things up as the quality of this movie screams television. As did the guest starring portion of the credits. Other than this scene and one where the lead character and his new lady friend hook up, there is nothing all that risqué in this film in terms of nudity or even gore. The story has a creature lurking the city streets of L.A. killing its victims. Wait a minute, that sounds awfully familiar doesn't it? Oh yes, it is a lot like the film "The Dark", in fact this film could be "The Dark II: This Time it Actually looks like an Alien". Seriously, it is almost the same movie other than the fact the monster looks different. We get a kill, we get lead guy Tim doing scenes establishing him, another kill, and then more boring scenes that go nowhere and are pointless. Then a final showdown with said creature in a factory setting that is so slow and plodding. At least that portion of "The Dark" was fairly well done, here it just takes to long as there are to many monster walking toward our intrepid heroes. The only curve ball this movie throws is when they take out the lead guy's girlfriend and substitute her for this nerdy, but very cute girl. A nice upgrade, as the lead guy's girl wore way to much eye makeup and reminded me of that hooker from "Mitchell". So there really is not much going for this movie other than a nice * scene at the beginning and a scene with a cute couple of skater girls later. The monster gets a lot of show too, what I mean is they are not hiding it as they must be proud of it. They should be, if this were a science fiction show like Star Trek, but this thing looks to much like an alien from a science fiction show more so than a bioengineered monster. It seems to be beating people to death at first, and I also thought it may be raping its victims because the first two victims are female. However, this is not a Roger Corman film, so no...it is not raping anyone. Even when it is sticking its tongue in its victim's mouth it is not doing anything sexual. It just has an idiotic thirst for spinal fluid. I know you are trying to be creative, but really...why not simply do blood and that way the film is at least a bit more gory. So what we have here is a film that is trying to capitalize on the success of "Alien", but rather than following that film's format, it instead thought it should be more like "The Dark" in that it is very slow, not tense and has a television movie feel to it. The lead guy is annoying, the lead female to hooker looking and the monster would look right at home in a science fiction show, but not a monster movie. You do get to see a bit of nudity, but nothing good after the first initial scene (trust me, you do not want to see the one involving the lead guy). To much awkward flirting, not enough gore! To much monster coming down hall, not enough action! To much nerdy but cute girl screaming, and not scenes of her naked! This film just does not have enough going for it to be an entertaining film and it just has a been there, done that feel for me. It not only borrows from "Alien", "The Dark", but it does the same things countless films from this era did and it brings nothing new to the table. Unless you count watching a girl skate down an entire parking garage and then slowly dressing in more clothes while feeling threatened as something new.

While Star Wars Episode V and The Howling were winning awards from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, this film was also a winner as Best Low-Budget Film. Low-Budget filmmakers could do worse in watching how William Malone (House on Haunted Hill ) managed to make an interesting film with award winning special effects for $74,000. It was Malone's first film and it starred Diana Davidson, whom I am sure no one remembers as they girl who was shot in the swimming pool in Dirty Harry. It also stars John Stinson, Jonathan David Moses, and Toni Jannotta, in her only film. Malone made sure that he had a good selection of beautiful victims to keep your interest. The staging was good in the respect that terror was built up gradually with a lot of suspense, and the creature was only partially shown until it got towards the end. You never really knew what you were dealing with. And, of course, when it is all over, you don't really know if you solved the problem.

Cheesy & low-budgeted 80's monster movies form a truly peculiar cinema breed. A small selection of them is so bad they become good again (or at least very amusing), but most of them are so bad they're just plain awful, period. "Scared to Death" represents a category on its own, namely the absolute worst of the worst. Besides being badly written, poorly acted, weakly directed and cheesy, this film is also unimaginably boring! Horror fans, myself included - are generally quite tolerant when it comes to 80's junk, but one thing nobody can stand is a mixture of cheese and boredom. The building up towards the killings takes far too long (up to seven minutes even) and when the creature finally strikes, we see absolutely nothing and the action promptly swifts to another scene. What's that all about? The story is also pretty non-existent and incoherent as hell. It's some kind of earthbound "Alien" rip-off, with a murderous monster dwelling around the sewers and occasionally perpetrating a lonely woman's house or car in order to kill her. One incompetent cop and one pathetic ex-cop slowly (better make that VERY slowly) discover the creature is a genetic experiment that went a little awry and got dumped in the sewers by its creators. They call it a Syngenor, which stand for Synthetic Genetic Organism, and apparently it has a large appetite and a preference for young chicks on roller blades. The sub plot about the ex-cop's beautiful romance with a lady whose car he accidentally hit is totally irrelevant and dreadful. There isn't the slightest bit of suspense or any attempt to create an atmosphere; all the potentially interesting sequences are dimly lit and when we finally catch a decent glimpse of the monster it looks like a poor imitation of "Alien". The cast members are a bunch of untalented nobodies and William Malone's direction is weak and uninspired. William Malone? Wasn't he also responsible for the more recent but equally stinking pile of garbage "Feardotcom"? Twenty years later and still a lousy director, practice doesn't always makes perfect. However, his other cheesy & low-budgeted 80's monster movie "Creature" (starring Klaus Kinski!) does qualify as so bad it's good!