Terrified

Terrified (1963)

*** (out of 4)

As one character explains, fear is the ultimate weapon that will force countries to fight one another and force one person to kill another. If someone has fear then they can be destroyed or destroy anyone in their way. A small town is being stalked by a maniac wearing a mask and this maniac likes to use fear as his weapon. One way of gaining fear is by playing chicken on the road forcing people to make up their mind on which way to turn the wheel. Another way to gain fear is by burying the victims alive so they can slowly count their final seconds before their air supply is gone.

Terrified is a wonderfully entertaining picture that goes on the same tactics used by director William Castle. In this film, the director tries every way possible to make the viewer feel uneasy and the entire film is about making the viewer go into a state of fear. The film certainly isn't horrifying but it does contain some wonderful atmosphere and some incredibly well directed scenes that do add a bit of eeriness, which makes this a perfect little sleeper that not too many have seen.

There's a wonderful sequence in the middle of the film where the maniac is stalking a victim inside a house. As the victim tries to make an escape, the maniac slowly walks behind him closing any door he goes through so that the victim can't go back but instead he must continue going forward where he will eventually be out of places to run. This scene lasts a good ten minutes and the thing gets more nail biting as every new door is closed. The one problem with the film is that there are way too many dialogue scenes where characters are trying to predict who the killer is. This here really takes away some of the tension and it would have played better without the characters guessing at who the maniac is. There's a shorter version of this movie available that is missing this dialogue so perhaps that version would be even better. This DVD contains the uncut, 79-minute version of the film.

For a low budget Crown-International movie, it may come as a surprise that while this movie can't be considered "great" or "good", it does have a fair number of effective moments. The ghost town makes a nice creepy location, especially with the night-time shooting. The middle of the movie, when the character of Ken suffers one terrifying moment after another while pursuing (or being pursued by) the hooded figure is a tense sequence.

But the movie doesn't quite work overall. The first third of the movie is somewhat slow for the most part. There are some stupid decisions by the characters, like with Ken having several opportunities to escape the area but staying. And as it's been pointed by other people in this user comments section, it's pretty easy to figure out who the masked figure is before the "surprise" revelation.

Still, while the movie isn't overall successful, it can't really be considered a "BAD" movie. If it's a slow night, and you want to see how low budget filmmakers can overcome their limited funds with creativity, you might find this movie entertaining enough.

1962's "Terrified" was one of several Crown International pictures that debuted on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1976 (February 19, 1977 to be exact), paired with second feature "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," from 1964. A production whose poverty stricken budget restricts the settings to a deserted Western ghost town and its creepy cemetery, but with a script that would have been commonplace some two decades later during the teen slasher cycle of the early 1980s. Directed by serial veteran Lew Landers, whose prior features included 1935's "The Raven" and 1943's "The Return of the Vampire" (both with Lugosi), a rather fitting conclusion to a busy career as an action specialist, although it cannot claim to be well paced. The idea of a hooded maniac stalking his victims has become quite a cliché since the early sixties, but this appears to be the first horror film that used it. We begin at the ghost town's cemetery with a helpless screaming victim lying in an open grave as his unknown tormentor pours cement over him, driving him insane. Next, we meet our tiny cast in a small coffee shop, who drive back to the deserted cemetery and discover the still warm corpse of the caretaker, obviously a victim of murder. As the young couple drive away to contact the sheriff (Denver Pyle), their friend, Ken Lewis (Rod Lauren, "The Crawling Hand"), inexplicably remains behind, stubbornly facing up to his own fears as he loses just about every scuffle with the hooded killer, who delights in terrorizing his prey, all of whom have close ties to Marge (Tracy Olsen), the sister of the first victim (who has conveniently escaped the asylum to go after his assailant). Once everyone convenes at the ghost town, the film remains just as trapped as the frightened characters, who simply don't behave in the most logical fashion, especially Ken, who seems to be under the impression that the killer is Marge's brother. There is one major subplot that is dropped halfway in, that of a crazed motorist who delights in running people off the road. This is how the sheriff first becomes involved, but nothing ever comes of it, and no explanation is offered as to who it was, except that it's not the character under the hood, an unforgivable sin. The killer's identity is hardly a major surprise, and Italian horror films quickly adopted the idea of a hooded maniac (1964's "Blood and Black Lace"), but it remains an interesting artifact ahead of its time, all but forgotten today. Chiller Theater aired this film three more times as a solo feature, on August 11 1979, July 26 1980, and October 10 1981, with much of the Crown International catalog scarcely seen on the airwaves since ("Twisted Brain" aka "Horror High" lasted the longest, long championed by Elvira).

Cheap drive-in shocker about a ski masked maniac running around a small town, the adjoining ghost town and and cemetery scaring people to the extreme before killing them.

Good small scale horror film is genuinely creepy with a nice feeling of tension running all through it. The film's one weakness is its sets which look very much like sets, the ghost town looks like the frontage of a western street scene at night and the cemetery is in no way realistic. If you can go with it and give the film's sets a pass the story and the performances will carry you along pleasantly to the end.

Worth a look.

I was in no way as impressed with this little film as others seem to be. It is definitely a cheap "shocker" about some bizarre plan to eliminate all the loved ones surrounding some dull young teen. Tracy Olsen plays the girl with little depth. Surrounding her are two male suitors - Rod Lauren as a young college student trying to realize what real fear is and the nature of terror and Steve Drexel as the uneducated but loaded with common sense guy. Both do adequate jobs, but this film is just so cheap. Most of the movie takes place in a deserted ghost town with a guy in a mask running around laughing and panting. These scenes are relatively effective and the killer does have an ability to appear menacing, but there are also some ludicrous scenes thrown in and some weird, unexplained stuff, and fantastic leaps of logic needed when the end is revealed. Threading its way throughout the entire story is Tracy's brother may or may not be the killer because he escaped from prison. There is also some guy in a mask running people off of the road. How was that possible when we finally do discover who the killer is? The script wanders and meanders quite a bit and again, the budget is low. But there are some things going for this film. Director Lew Landers does have some tension created in some scenes. I did like the opening scene, and I did think the use of setting was utilized as well as might be expected given the apparent budget. The acting is mediocre at best and poor in general.Do look for a young Denver Pyle as the sheriff, however.