Scared to Death

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• USA • 1980 • 96m •

• Directed by: William Malone. • Starring: John Stinson, Diana Davidson, David Moses, Toni Jannotta, Walker Edmiston, Pamela Bowman, Mike Muscat, Freddie Dawson, Tracy Weddle, Joleen Porcaro, David Daniels, Stephen Fanning, Greer Justin. • Music by: Thomas Chase, Dell Hake.

A series of hideous murders is taking place, and Inspector Capell and cop-turned-novelist Lonergan are investigating. The murders are found to be the work of an out-of-control experiment in genetic engineering. The two men must descend into the city's sewer systems to destroy the horrific miscreation. It won't be hard to find, as it's already looking for its next victims...

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1:37

Review:

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?

Review by CuriosityKilledShawn from the Internet Movie Database.

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