Abraxas

Titre original : Scared Stiff

1987
R
1h 23min

NOTE IMDb

4,8/10

1 k

MA NOTE

Andrew Stevens and Mary Page Keller in Abraxas (1987)

Strange visions come to haunt a singer when she, her son, and her psychiatrist-turned-boyfriend move into an old colonial house that is haunted by the ghost of a ruthless slave owner.

Lire trailer1:28

1 Video

46 photos

Horreur

D'étranges visions hantent une chanteuse lorsqu'elle, son fils et son psychiatre qui est aussi son petit ami emménagent dans une vieille maison coloniale hantée par le fantôme d'un impitoyab... Tout lireD'étranges visions hantent une chanteuse lorsqu'elle, son fils et son psychiatre qui est aussi son petit ami emménagent dans une vieille maison coloniale hantée par le fantôme d'un impitoyable propriétaire d'esclaves.D'étranges visions hantent une chanteuse lorsqu'elle, son fils et son psychiatre qui est aussi son petit ami emménagent dans une vieille maison coloniale hantée par le fantôme d'un impitoyable propriétaire d'esclaves.

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

NOTE IMDb

4,8/10

1 k

MA NOTE

Voir les informations de production sur IMDbPro

Vidéos1

Trailer 1:28

Official Teaser Trailer

Photos46

+ 41

Avis des utilisateurs26

4,81K

Avis à la une

brandonsites1981

* out of 4.

Awful film about a family moving into a new house and falling prey to a rubber faced African voodoo monster that possesses Andrew Stevens and forces him to kill his family. The special effects are really that terrible, the entire cast is bland, and the situations that unfold in the film are a laugh riot. Good to watch and make fun of, otherwise avoid this piece of junk masquerading as a horror film. Rated R.

4BA_Harrison

You won't be.

'80s supernatural horror Scared Stiff is, for the most part, a rather dull affair, but it is lifted somewhat by a final twenty minutes that completely throw logic and sanity out of the window. The lunacy is hinted at in an earlier scene where a young lad's toy cars come to life, engines roaring and wheels spinning, but it's not until the closing act that director Richard Friedman goes all out with the madness, chucking in time travel, a snarling monster, an exploding police car (it's amazing how easy the vehicle blows up), a mouldy corpse smashing through a window (having hung outside for several days unnoticed), a giant floating lampshade in the shape of an Indian, and Ivory Coast natives hurling spears through time and space.

The plot goes something like this: having recovered from a mental breakdown, pop star Kate moves into a new home with her boyfriend (and doctor) David Young (Andrew Stevens), and her seven year old son Jason (Josh Segal), unaware that the place is haunted by the malevolent ghost of a slave merchant. This hokey old set-up is rife with clichés, Friedman's attempts at atmosphere and foreboding fall horribly flat, his cast give uniformly bad performances, and certain scenes are horribly dated (such as the moment when Jason's computer projects a holographic 3D image or when David explains what diskettes are for). If you can, try and stay the distance for the mind-numbingly bonkers ending, which is just about worth the wait, but I wouldn't blame you if you gave up and found something better to do with your time.

2/10, plus a couple more points for the nutty stuff.

6CMRKeyboadist

Silly Little Film

Scared Stiff is definitely a film that most B horror fans should venture into seeing. It literally has EVERYTHING. Horrible editing, awful acting, a script that goes nowhere, off the wall gore (at the end), and an incredible silly ending!

Kate, David and Kate's son move into and old house. Kate is an actress and David is a therapist. When they move into this house things start going very strange as Kate starts seeing things, along with her son. It turns out that the house they moved into belonged to an evil man that tortured slaves back in the late 1800's. As the family stays in the house lounger, the more possessed David becomes.

I have a soft spot for movies like this. Yes, it was a terrible film. No doubt about that. But, did I enjoy this film... I would have to say yes. For fans of a genre long dead this is definitely worth seeing as the story is actually not half bad. It is everything else that brings this movie down. Example: there is a scene in which a man is hanging outside of a window. We get a close up of his face for roughly 15 seconds. At the end of the scene, we see the mans eyes move. Truly poor editing. If you watch this movie you will see many inconsistencies. For me, that is what gives it its charm.

Goofy movie that is well worth watching for all of you 80's horror fans. 6/10

6tildagravette

Imaginative Low Budget Horror

I'm not going to sit here and say that Scared Stiff is some sort of lost classic of the genre. It's not. It has pacing problems and you're never quite sure if it's a haunted house movie, a "she's losing her mind" movie, or an installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, but when it gets something right, it really gets it right.

A single mother pop star moves into a spooky antebellum mansion with her child and boyfriend and not only begins to unravel the house's gruesome history, but starts to believe that she's actually seeing the previous owners in her day to day life.

Scared Stiff starts out as a typical haunted house film. The lead character is plagued with visions and dreams of the wicked slave owner who used to live there and she thinks she's losing her mind. All of a sudden, it seems as if her doctor boyfriend can't be trusted either and it turns into one of those "is she crazy or being gaslit?" movies, before pulling out all the stops in a genuinely imaginative and nightmarish final act.

It's not as if Scared Stiff is brilliant, but it's competent and the final act is incredibly memorable, creepy, and downbeat.

FieCrier

What's that smell?

Could it be the workman, hanging undiscovered outside a boy's screenless window? He hangs there by his neck for days, perhaps weeks without being found, despite being in clear view from the outside, despite being less than a foot away from the boy's window; shouldn't there be flies? shouldn't the smell be intense?

But no, as you might suspect, it is this movie that stinks - stinks real bad. Whether its Andrew Stevens typical performance as...Andrew Stevens, or the Comic Relief Cop, or the Negroid (!) Slaveowner Werebeast, or the Giant Kitsch Indian Head Lamp, or, or, or...oh man, it's too bad to go on.

Miss it, unless you want to kill some time, and have a few (not many) laughs or groans at this painful wreck.

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Anecdotes
After the film's underwhelming performance, it was released on VHS and then LaserDisc, but then fell into obscurity. In 2004, film historian Robert Ellinger was in one of the last video rental stores that still sold VHS tapes when the film caught his eye. He loved the film's music, especially "Beat of the Heart", but no soundtrack had ever been released. This began his long obsession with the film. He began acquiring everything he could from the film: test posters, various foreign VHS copies and even a promotional paperweight from when the film was released to home video. He was able to reach the film's costume designer Beverly Safier, who sent him a piece of fabric from one of the dresses that Kate wears in the film. He wanted to see if the film had other fans, so he uploaded "Beat of the Heart" to YouTube and discovered that there were fans who loved both the song and the movie. Because Ellinger works in the music industry, he was able to locate the film's composer The Barber Brothers (who was really just one person, Billy Barber) and asked him if he had the original masters for the soundtrack, but they were lost. Unwilling to give up, Ellinger contacted producer Daniel F. Bacaner, who had disowned the film and was surprised to hear someone mentioning the film so long after its release. Ellinger told Bacaner that he should re-release the film to introduce it to a new audience. They were able to locate the original negatives in an MGM vault in Pittsburgh, where it had remained for thirty years, as well as a treasure trove of unused promotional materials. Bacaner contacted director Richard Friedman and was able to secure a restoration by Arrow Video, who also gave the film a Blu-Ray release. They were able to get some of the cast and crew to provide some background information on the film, and Friedman, Bacaner and Ellinger made a commentary track. Billy Barber even performed a piano cover of "Beat of the Heart." As thanks for setting the restoration in motion, Bacaner gave Ellinger some negatives from the film out of his personal collection.

Gaffes
The workman's eyes clearly move after he is dead.

Citations
Michael Murphy: [as a hallucination to Kate] Hi Miss Christopher... I'm fine now... wanna see?
[unzips his forehead, causing his scalp to fall off, displaying his pulsating brain]