AAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Wow, guys. I am really Scared to Death this week. Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema.

If you would, think back to December of last year. I reviewed the movie The Deadly Spawn. That little 1983 sci-fi horror flick was quite fun. By absolute accident, the following week, I covered Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor. What I didn’t realize at the time I scheduled those two reviews to be done, months ahead of being published, was that they were from the same series. The Deadly Spawn was the original. Metamorphosis is a sort of sequel. Well, this year, while not scheduled back-to-back, I have scheduled two more films that are related to each other – 1980’s Scared to Death and the 1990 sequel Syngenor.

This time, they are much closer in connection.

The alternate titles to Scared to Death are The Aberdeen Experiment and Scared to Death: Syngenor. That second alternate title came along later to make sure the 1990 Syngenor sequel made for an obvious connection to this original for people roaming about the video store on a late 1990 Saturday night. But if we were to go all the way back to the beginning, long before that sequel a decade later, we’d find this movie’s director.

Director and co-writer William Malone wanted to become a film director. He felt the best way to do this on the very limited budget he could raise was to make a monster movie. Monster movies, from the very beginning of their existence, were always well known to give a lot of people their start in the business. For Malone, he felt he could get the biggest bang for his buck. You can spend a little less money but have a lot of production value. He knew a thing or two about how to create a monster as well because he used to work at a mask factory.

He raised about $74,000 by mortgaging his house and selling most of his possessions. He even sold his car to get the money he needed to make this movie. He spent the next three months building the monster suit. While he was doing that, he was assembling his cast. Initially, Malone cast Rick Springfield as his lead, Ted. Springfield is best known for being a pop star in the early 80s with “Jessie’s Girl” by far his biggest hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard Chart. By the dawn of the 80s, he also was getting into acting, appearing on TV with some one-episode guest roles on shows like The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Battlestar Galactica, The Rockford Files, and CHiPs. He’d ultimately become a series regular on the soap opera General Hospital.

Now, very obviously, Springfield is not in this movie. I hope you picked up on that by saying Malone initially cast Springfield. It’s crazy what ultimately happened. It’s something you can only really get away with if you are a pop star, and rising, established actor, and you’re working on a movie that is being made on only $74,000. The night before filming was to begin, Springfield called Malone to tell him he could not be in his movie because he would miss too many acting classes. Thankfully for Malone, he remembered a guy from an improv class he took named John Stinson. Stinson agreed to be in the movie, and filming finally got rolling in February 1979. In something that is kind of unusual for movies made on a shoestring budget back then, the film took four weeks to shoot. Nowadays, micro-budget films might only get shot on weekends, take a really long time, maybe even up to a year, and require a lot of crowdfunding to get them completed. But, even on a small budget, Malone made this feel more like a legitimate film shoot like much bigger budget films.

Before we dive in, there is an Academy Award winner associated with this movie too. Malone’s co-writer for this movie is Robert Short. By trade, even back then, Short was a makeup artist and did effects work for movies and TV shows. He worked on everything from Hollywood Boulevard to Chopping Mall to the made-for-TV Sabrina: The Teenage Witch movie, Sabrina, Down Under. But he also did work on effects for movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Most importantly, though, he was the makeup guy for 1988’s Beetlejuice. That would win him the Academy Award for Best Makeup. Short is still working today.

William Malone also kept working after this movie and made the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill. His Wikipedia page also notes that he’s actually quite well-known for collecting Forbidden Planet memorabilia. That’s kind of cool. But… let’s get into Scared to Death and check out this low-budget monster flick!

And it starts with this great Prologue title card:

I love stuff like this. Just this white text against (what used to be) a black screen sets a mood and a tone for the movie. “Yeah, you’re watching a movie. But there are things that we explore based on real science. Someday, our world will change.” In the 1950s, that sort of statement would have been read by a crusty old white guy with a PhD in something with the intention of making their B-grade monster movie seem legit and serious. Then, you’d see the incredibly stupid rubber mask monster that was deployed for the movie. Here, it’s silence. It’s just those white words against (what used to be) a black screen.

Sure, maybe I have the benefit of seeing this 45 years on in a presentation that is scuffed to be sure. I kept parenthetically mentioning the washed-out look of that black screen. That’s because this instantly gave me a vibe that I’m either sitting in a classroom or some other academic sense, watching something that was recorded as a true testament of something that happened, or I’m watching something I shouldn’t be. All the faded colors and the pops and cracks in the soundtrack match with deep scratches in the film, giving all this a layer of spooky thrill.

But I digress…

The movie opens in a seemingly quiet cul-de-sac. This seems like a normal, pleasant neighborhood somewhere in Americana. However, we soon get the sense that it is not as pleasant as we were led to believe. A leaf floats with some rainwater toward the storm drain, where something seems to be lurking below ground. We go into the storm drain where we hear a baby crying and see something that looks downright alien or, at the very least, kinda gross.

Toward the end of the credits, we begin walking the alleys and streets of this town through the POV of some sort of creature. It looks into a window to see a girl getting dressed. Being that this movie was made in 1979, it knows not to wait a second longer to show tits and bush, so that’s kinda sweet. The girl gets a call from a guy she is dating, and we’re reminded, again, that this is 1979. First, it’s early tits and bush. Second, it’s that she doesn’t want to go to some dorky film festival with her boyfriend because her favorite TV show is about to come on and she doesn’t want to miss it. No widespread availability of VCRs in 1979, kiddos!

She hears what she thinks is her cat knocking over a flower pot. As she investigates, the power goes out. This causes her to lament that she can no longer paint her toenails if she can’t see anything. As she stumbles around in the dark with a candle, looking for the fuse box, she is attacked by some sort of monster that rips her up pretty good.

The next day, the police find a clear sticky goo all over the place in the house. The police investigation, led by Detective Lou Capell (played by Welsh rugby player David Moses), can’t quite figure out who could have done this to the girl, Janie. Her leg was torn from her body. The closet door was ripped from its hinges. It seems as though Janie’s attacker had an incredible amount of strength. This is also illustrated by Lou saying that her hair was pulled back so hard, it snapped her neck.

I like that his chief, who has just shown up at the scene of the murder, which seemingly is just the following morning, tells Lou that there is incredible pressure to solve this case quickly. The police chief has the mayor, the commissioner, and the press on his ass to get this solved. Why do I think this police force has fucked up something terribly in the past, and the chief is in hot water with the mayor and the commissioner, so now, when we have a random blonde girl who got killed by a monster comes along, they better get this shit solved fast and accurately, despite having ZERO evidence.

Some evidence that maybe something did go awry previously comes up. Lou tells the chief that if he really wants to get this case solved quickly, they need to call in Ted Lonergan. The chief does NOT want Lonergan involved whatsoever. Apparently, the chief thinks Ted sucks and, I dunno, he doesn’t know how to wipe his ass properly or something.

Ted was formerly a cop. He’s now a private dick and a writer. Ted doesn’t play by the rules either. He gets into a tiff with the guy who publishes Ted’s books over how Ted just writes the same story over and over. On the way out, Ted is too busy eating Pop Rocks candy to pay attention to where he’s going as he backs out of his parking spot. He runs right into the car of Jennifer Stanton. He… does not really seem to apologize. He’s kind of a snarky asshole and makes everything into a joke even when Jennifer is really frustrated and irritated since the car has been in her family for decades and apparently means a lot to her.

Okay, I’ll go ahead and accept that the reason why the mayor, the commissioner, and the press are instantly breathing down the chief’s neck about getting a random blonde lady’s murder solved as quickly as possible is probably due to Ted being a complete asshole in some other scenario.

I mean… what did he do? Did he tell the parents of a girl who was kidnapped, raped, and killed that she shouldn’t have worn that miniskirt she was found in? Did he run over a little girl while in hot pursuit of someone who was jaywalking? Did he shoot some guy’s dog and then tell him that the dog didn’t want any of his Pop Rocks candy, so he had it coming? None of these things would surprise me if this is why the chief 1) needs this to be resolved quickly and 2) why he doesn’t want Ted within a million miles of Lou’s investigation.

But Lou and Ted hang out and play chess all the time. So, guess what happens immediately? Lou tells Ted about how he’s got a case with no leads or anything to go off of. Granted, Ted does not want to help. He says he’s done with police work. He definitely won’t do anything to help the chief. I guess justice be damned for this random blonde lady who got killed by a monster one night.

Later, Jennifer stops by Ted’s office and asks for a check for the damages to her old Jaguar. He says he can’t give her a check. No, he doesn’t trust banks. Great. Our hero is a weirdo. I mean, not that we didn’t pick up on that in his first scene, but come on… He refuses to take anything seriously when it comes to running into a lady’s classic Jaguar in the parking lot, something, mind you, he is most definitely at fault for. He’s a conspiracy nutter and doesn’t trust banks. He won’t help the cops solve the murder of a girl. This guy is a real cool dude. He does at least treat this meeting with Jennifer normally. While he doesn’t believe in banks, he does hand over an envelope with over $2000 in it to help her get her car fixed. He even gives her the name of a Scottish fella he knows who will get her the parts she needs and take care of her. I mostly am ribbing him for being portrayed as a goof, but he does have some charm in this second meeting with Jennifer. This will make for an easier pill to swallow when the two become love interests.

That same night, another random blonde lady gets killed by our monster. This scene is actually very well done. She tries to start her car. The car doesn’t initially want to start. Then, after it does start, she tries putting it in gear, but it won’t go anywhere. That’s because, as we see through the back window of the car, the monster has lifted the back of the car off the ground. The monster has even made it so that after he releases the car, it remains in a precarious position to prevent her from driving off. As the girl opens the door to get out to check, he pops up and attacks her. It’s good stuff.

I will also say that we do see more of the monster than we did before. Though, as you can tell by my screencaps, my version of the movie is pretty washed out and hard to see things when there is little to no light. I don’t know if we saw more of the monster in the earlier scenes or not. That was almost impossible to suss out during the credits in the sewer or in the darkened house of Janie, the first victim we saw. This time, though, we get a sense of what its face and body look like and, yeah, it looks pretty cool. Definitely better than what you’d expect on such a low budget. So… good on the movie for a really good couple of kill scenes and a neat monster in these early stages of the movie.

Now, I must also admit that there is a revelation after this second kill scene in the movie. There’s a woman watching a TV report about the death of Janie. There’s a reason why the police chief is so nervous about getting this solved. The news report says Janie’s body was the eleventh found in such a state. Okay, so, yeah… Let’s get this shit solved! The earlier scene only had Lou and the chief reacting as if this was the literal first death, not that there were ten before it. So, that is cleared up now. This monster’s been busy. Also, by the end of the article, I want to talk about the outfit the lady was wearing while watching that news report because, like back in the Xtro 3 review, when my nerd brain immediately recognized Jeanne Mori from Star Trek III, it’s at it again, but this time finding something related to 70s Doctor Who.

Okay, so things are starting to progress between Jennifer and Ted. He’s left her a flower and a note stating that he hopes she likes the color of the flower. She goes to his place and leaves a note inviting him out to dinner. On her way to pick him up for dinner, she gets the sense of someone following her, but it’s only a red herring. Gotta keep up the creepy scenes even as the romance stuff gets up to speed. Things do get a little weird during the dinner scene with Jennifer and Ted. I mean, not necessarily anything that’s said, because, honestly, that is kind of charming, and you can see a little chemistry between the two actors, but it’s the transition to the very soft focus romance/sex scene, but whatever. It’s kind of silly and kind of almost purposely going over the top to at least give something the poor girlfriends being dragged to this at the drive-in to sink their teeth into in 1980/81.

Alright, back to the monster part of the movie. Apparently, there is some sort of disturbance in the sewers and storm drains. Workers are called in to check it out. This part of the storm drain turns out to be exactly where the monster hangs out most of the time when he’s not up on the surface, killin’ blonde ladies. The monster kills one of the workers, and when the other goes in through the manhole to see what’s going on, he sees something and quickly goes back to the surface.

Lou returns to try once again to get Ted to help with the investigation. Lou says there is no pattern to these killings. Whoever this killer is, he’s clearly stronger than the typical killer. Lou says that the latest victim they found, the lady in the car, is apparently still alive, but comatose. Ted turns Lou down once again, frustrating the investigator.

Elsewhere, a pair of couples are in a parking garage to rollerskate. One of the girls, antsy to get going, decides to go for a run by herself. It’s not long before strange noises can be heard in the garage. Because this is a horror movie, of course, the girl who decides to separate from her friends is immediately in mortal danger. She tries to switch her shoes at the car so she can actually, you know, run away, instead of trying to rollerskate up the inclines in the garage, but that gives the monster time to catch up to her. She is attacked, and the monster seemingly tries to make out with her while also maybe crushing her head? I think that’s what’s going on. He sticks his tongue out and definitely looks like he’s giving her a big ol’ wet kiss. But she’s also bleeding. Eh… whatever happened, that lady is dead and has joined the ever-growing list of dead women in the city.

Ted shows up at the latest crime scene to see what’s going on and provide some help to the investigation. Over to the side of the crime scene, the woman who earlier watched a news report about how many dead women have been found is willing to talk to Jennifer, who is now working for Ted, about what she knows. Earlier, the woman called the police after watching the news report, but never said anything. She’s willing to talk to Jennifer only because she refuses to talk to the police.

The woman’s name is Sherry Carpenter. Sherry arranges to meet Jennifer in a dark and creepy warehouse late at night. As Jennifer tries to find Sherry, she discovers the clear gel-like goop on a pipe. That pipe is near a shaft that seems like a nice, dark place for a scary monster to hide. Wikipedia claimed that this movie was inspired by Alien. However, Alien was released after this movie was in production… Again, according to the date of February 1979 as being the production start date given in the article. This scene with the monster stalking Jennifer in the warehouse certainly has a feel of that sci-fi horror classic. Not to mention the tongue that extends from the mouth, which has a secondary use from what we might expect a tongue to do.

This movie has a bit of a reputation for being “boring” among horror fans. I don’t necessarily agree with that assessment. I will admit some scenes go on a little too long. Yes, there is a fair amount of runtime given to both the procedural element, with Lou and Ted doing investigations, and the romance between Ted and Jennifer. However, this movie is not poorly shot, directed, or is the monster poorly designed. It’s not long on spooky elements, but it is good with what it’s trying to accomplish as a sci-fi horror movie. I will say the acting is kind of rough. The funniest performance is from Toni Jannotta, who plays Sherry. He kind of talks like a cross between a teenager and a porn star with her high-pitched voice and kind of uncertain delivery. Yet, she’s a super smart scientist lady. Yet, she sounds like someone who will break down and cry the moment you tell her that the burger you ordered from her at McDonald’s still has the onions you didn’t want on it. It’s hard to explain, but if you ever see this movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

She also keeps referring to the scientist she worked with as “Dr. Amberdeen,” even though the movie was once titled The ABERDEEN Experiment. Brilliant.

Okay, so Jennifer was trying to meet Sherry at a science facility where Sherry worked with a scientist to design a genetically created creature. The doctor she worked with died before he could kill the creature that he created. The doctor had a very bad feeling that if the creature grew up, it could have a great capacity to kill. She thinks the murderer of these women around Los Angeles is the escaped monster that is basically left to roam the streets and sewers free.

But what is it doing with the tongue thing? Doctors believe the women who survived the attacks and are in comas are there because of a brain tumor. It would explain the seizures they had just before they slipped into the comas. However, Sherry says that what the creature is doing is harvesting spinal fluid from the women it attacks.

Ted agrees with Sherry that this needs to be looked into further. He tells Lou to go to the coroner and make sure nothing was overlooked in any of the bodies found. Sure enough, there was a high number of deaths that were attributed to brain tumors recently. However, Lou also says the investigation is officially closed. The police believe they killed the suspect in a shootout. Ted is pissed because this means it will no longer be investigated.

Meanwhile, Sherry has returned to the lab to look over the doctor’s notes. Ted has also realized the central point that all the deaths seem to have happened around the lab. So he takes off to help Sherry. Before he arrives, Sherry is doing a real helpful thing for the audience… she is reading the scientist’s notes about the creature out loud to no one else but us. That’s where we learn that the creature was dubbed a Syngenor. That’s a portmanteau of Synthesized Genetic Organism. I have more to say about these notes in just a bit, but suffice it to say, she’s not alone at the lab. Nope, she hears noises and decides to investigate instead of running away.

Ted arrives just as she discovers the dying body of one of the sewer workers. The guy is able to tell Ted about how the syngenor was in the sewer, killing people before he dies. Ted realizes that’s how it gets around without being seen on the streets. Ted and Sherry go into the sewer to find and hopefully kill the syngenor. Sherry also warns Ted that the syngenor is quite possibly ready to reproduce and is very likely the type of creature that can do it asexually.

In the sewers, the two of them find several victims who are strewn about and are all still alive… barely. The creature is feeding on their spinal fluid, and that thing we saw at the start of the movie might be the creature’s young? What seems to be the babies are attached to the bodies of the victims and slowly sucking them dry. As Ted starts killing the young syngenors, the adult syngenor arrives to bust up this shit, forcing the pair to flee. As they try to escape, Ted shoots the creature a couple of times, but it doesn’t seem to stop the monster from continuing after them. They make their way out of the sewer as the syngenor slowly chases after them in the corridors of the sewer.

As Ted and Sherry enter a metal shop from the sewer, Lou arrives and calls for a map of the sewers to find where the monster is hiding out. The syngenor chases Ted and Sherry through the metal shop and nearly catches them, but they escape once more. Ted discovers something they can use to kill the monster – the giant hydraulic press. They set a trap for the monster by having Ted lure the creature onto the base of the press. Then, when the creature is under the press, Sherry will operate the machine and smash it.

The plan works. Ted and Sherry kill the monster and seemingly save the day with the last-minute help from Lou blasting the syngenor onto the press platform with a shotgun. Back at the hospital, Jennifer awakens from her coma, but not after having a terrible nightmare where she’s once again attacked by the syngenor. The movie ends on a peculiar note as Jennifer is not reunited with Ted, and we return to the sewer with the question remaining whether there is another monster lurking and waiting to attack again.

Aaaaand, yes, there is another monster because we’ll be looking at the sequel that came along ten years later in a couple of months.

Scared to Death is actually not a bad little movie. It works just fine as a drive-in or late-night horror host type of movie. The saving grace of the movie is the movie’s creature. The suit that Malone worked on for a few months is top-notch. There are a couple of pretty tense moments and some good jump scares. For a guy’s first time movie, and on a meager $74,000 budget, it could have been far, far worse.

That’s not to say there aren’t some problems. The movie is lacking in performances. Some are fine. Some are pretty bad. The dialogue isn’t exactly great, so it’s entirely possible these actors are truly better than what we saw, and they just didn’t have dialogue to help them show that.

The real problem is that this is a 96-minute movie. I mentioned already that some scenes go on a little too long. It’s very true. Granted, a couple of times, the lack of a trimmed-down pace did help in some of the scenes in which the syngenor attacked someone. That said, this would have been a much better 80-minute movie. Just tightening up the bolts and screws would have done this movie wonders. Still, it’s a passable little monster flick that is from the very early days of the slasher era, that also serves as that type of horror too.

Okay, so I wanted to bring up something my nerd brain spotted immediately. So, again, this is a callback from when I found Jeanne Mori in Xtro 3. Being a massive nerd and someone who grew up on nerd things, I knew right away she was from Star Trek III, right? Okay, so the first time we see Sherry as she is doing some ironing and watching the news report about the killer stalking the streets, this is what she looks like:

My brain immediately said, “Holy shit, it’s Sarah Jane Smith from the Doctor Who serial The Head of Fear!”

And I was fucking right.

What is that? Okay, yes, it’s how my stupid nerd brain works, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Sure, there are slight differences in the outfit, but this is so damn close it comes off almost like a cosplay version of Sarah Jane’s outfit from The Hand of Fear. Was this something that was sort of, kind of mass-produced? Did someone in the 70s say, “What girls need is white overalls, with pink pinstripes, and three red stars on the front.” And then people all over the world fell in love with the design? Is this a subtle reference to that Doctor Who serial, even in the time in which this was made, being relatively soon after that serial had aired? I’m not kidding. I really want to know what the answer to this question is. Coincidence? On purpose reference? What is going on here?!?

I do not know, but I really would like to know. Plus, let’s face it, that season 13/14 era Elisabeth Sladen is just cute as a button, isn’t she?

Alright… Scared to Death is now done. Check it off the list! We’ll deal with 1990’s Syngenor in November. Next time, though, we will need to put all our deductive skills on display so we can solve the 1974 Italian giallo, Puzzle. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to buy a lifetime supply of Pop Rocks and drive into women’s cars in the hopes they will want to date me.