Scared to Death

This is your typical regional horror sci-fi filmaking from the late 70's early 80's period, the ones without any "names", with slow pacing, foggy cameras, poor lighting, and music that can actually put you to sleep! In fact it reminds me of another small town sci-fi film called ALIEN FACTOR! This creature, SYNGENOR, is actually cool looking, so cool someone made another film with the syngenor titled, what else, SYNGENOR, but with a better budget, and a professional cast (not sure why William Malone didn't get involved in this one.). This film the violence is very tame, not really scarely, the random act of attacks by the creature to nameless victim is few and far between, in between you get a boring cop and his partner trying to solve the crime, losts of talk, overall a slow film that probably bored the audeince to tears! This film actually got a decent release back in 82, but didnt play here in Seattle, but was playing in Oregon as a double bill with SCREAMER! The creature is really cool looking for its time, so I don't know why they didn;t show it more often.`

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 does not make sense on so many points, starting with it being titled Scared to Death despite the fact that no one in it is scared to death, or even mentions the possibility of such. Here are just a few of the baffling questions Scared to Death raises and never answers:

1. At the beginning of the film, an investigator says he can't precisely determine the victim's time of death because it was unnaturally cold in the room when she was murdered. We're never told how the investigator could tell this, and the issue of coldness never comes up again.

2. Why do the police answer Shelly's phone call and then almost immediately hang up? Not even a "Is anyone there?".

3. Why does Sherry go to Jennifer with her information on the killings? The two don't know each other, so we're left to speculate that Jennifer is some sort of specialist, but her profession is never revealed.

4. If the creature's method of killing makes it look like an epileptic fit or a brain tumor, how were so many victims identified as murder cases?

5. Even the scientist who created the Syngenor said it is so dangerous that he would have to kill it before it reached maturity. So... why create it? The filmmakers seems to have been banking on audiences thinking that genetic engineering produces completely random results.

The main problem with Scared to Death, though, is that it is overly reliant on jump scares. Over and over, we watch as a character slowly wanders alone through a dimly lit, dank location until the soundtrack spikes, and the monster pops up in your face before killing the character in gratuitously gory fashion. The director seemingly never tires of this formula, and only towards the end does he aspire to make the viewer actually afraid rather than just jumpy.

On top of the many pointless gory death scenes, we get no less than three scenes where the detective in charge of the investigation (Lou) pleads with his ex-partner (Ted) to help him out, and he refuses (we never learn why). The film spends so much time on scenes that go nowhere that there's hardly any time to establish a plot, which is just as well, since what plot there is is pretty thin.

There is a passable romance sub-plot, with decent performances by both actors, but it never serves a purpose in the overall story other than to give Ted a motivation to kick genetically engineered monster butt (because apparently his best friend pleading for his help wasn't enough).

Still, I can't say that the sole enjoyment I got out of this film was being able to laugh at it. The musical score is strong and effective at creating mood, the monster design is fairly cool, and the cast are all consistently likable, even in those moments where the acting is unconvincing. The budget is noticeably low, but the cinematography is good, and there's an obvious love for variety of sets. There's also an overall sense of fun, even if it misses that mark as often as it hits it.

Scared for Death screams for faster pacing and more depth, even by the standards of the monster movie genre, and can't be recommended when there are so many superior films in the same vein. But if you have some particular reason for wanting to watch it, and set your standards low, my expectation is that you will enjoy it.

Rather than use his scientific genius to benefit mankind, a genetics expert creates a vicious synthesised life-form that uses its forked tongue to drain the spinal fluid of its victims. Why? I dunno… must've seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose. Cop turned novelist Ted Lonergan (John Stinson) helps his police pal Lou (David Moses) to investigate.

This one starts out in classic B-movie monster mode with a naked blonde babe slipping into sexy, silky red underwear before becoming another victim of the Syngenor (Synthesised Genetic Organism). Its a fun, trashy way to kick things off, but the rest of the film offers very little to get excited about: lots of dull chit chat, a few gore-free deaths, and some roller-skating, all leading to the inevitable showdown between Ted and the incredibly slow moving H.R.Giger-style creature in a factory (an ending that might possibly have influenced The Terminator!).

Missable stuff, unless you absolutely have to see every movie inspired in some way by Ridley Scott's Alien.

William Malone didn't exactly deliver a good movie here. Far from, actually, but heck, it was his first one. Still, you'll have to tolerate some atrocious 'chop-chop' editing, some bad acting and a plot way too basic for its own good. All the events in this film move at the pace of a snail that's stuck in the mud. The whole story is played by the book, and it's one with not many pages in it (just enough to write down the premise: a murderous creature is loose in the city and two people must stop it). Surprisingly, things do remain watchable most of the time, somehow. The creature design is pretty cool, but also nothing more than a man in a rubber suit. A bit of full frontal female nudity during the opening-scene and a lack of gore throughout the entire film is what we get. But my guess is that it's still worth a watch for lovers of obscure creature features (honestly, I myself didn't mind watching it). "Scared To Death" always seemed to me a bit of a stupid, unsuitable title for this kind of film though. Given the place where the creature resides, why not dub it... "The Sewer Dweller"? Malone's first outing even got some sort of a semi-(un)official sequel nine years later, called "Syngenor" (1990). Would have been much easier if they had called that one "Syngenor 2" and this one simply "Syngenor". Aw, what the hell am I talking about.