1980’s “Scared to Death” is a movie that i’ve kind of inadvertently ended up covering, last year a regular viewer recommended checking out a film called “SynGenOr” because they said it would suit the tone of this channel down to the ground. So I looked it up and found that it was actually kinda sorta loosely connected to todays movie. And what I mean by that is that, SynGenOr basically WANTED to be a sequel to “Scared to Death” but because “Scared to Death” at that time was SO obscure and low budget, they didnt want to run the risk of ostracising potential audiences by tying it to a forgotten movie made 10 years prior that was out of circulation. As such, I kind of felt like it made sense to cover “Scared to Death” BEFORE SynGenOr because…while they’re largely unconnected, I am nothing if not a bit of a completionist and I like to try and do these things properly.

So! Scared to Death! A movie that damn near bankrupt director and writer William Malone, im not kidding the film cost $74k to produce and he ended up selling everything he owned including his car to get it made. So, with SO much on the line, you’d think that this HAD to be something incredible right? Well…

Scared to Death follows the misadventures of “Ted” and as the film opens, Teds just quit his job as a detective to pursue a career in writing (with maybe a lil freelance detective work on the downlow) As he’s leaving the station however he backs out into the car of a lady called Jennifer. Ted tries to leave the scene but Jennifer is adamant he needs to stay because the cars a “vintage” and she wants the police to document the hit. After some backing and forthing that gets a bit surreal, Ted gives Jennifer a business card with his new office address and phone number and tells her to reach out to him there.

Which she does, she says theres at LEAST $1200 of damages to her car, and without missing a beat Ted heads into a back room and returns with an envelope containing $2000 which he tells her to keep. This changes the tone of the relationship immediately and the pair soon warm up to each, Ted even goes so far as to ask Jennifer out, which she politely declines, but is flattered all the same.

And it’s while this is going on that the main thrust of the film begins to take shape as a mysterious person or “Being” has been stalking the streets of L.A attacking anyone it can find, leaving them either dead or comatose. At the time we join the film we see the creature claim its 10th and 11th victims in relatively quick succession with the police currently hot on the case. Overseeing this is a chap called “Lou” who’s good friends with “Ted” and over a game of chess, the pair briefly discuss the case before Lou has to head back to work.
We then pick back up with Jennifer, returning home from the grocery store. When she arrives at her house, Ted appears to have left her a handwritten note apologising once again for the incident and leaves her a big bunch of flowers. Jennifer’s charmed and heads back over to Teds place to leave a note of her own saying that she’s reconsidered Teds offer and would love to go for dinner some time.

Which they do! Later that evening Jennifer arrives at Teds offices and the pair decide to head back to Jens house for a couple of streaks before engaging in little * bouncy bouncy* and while THATS going on, we then cut to two sanitation workers who’ve been asked to do some investigative work in a nearby sewer system. One of the pair heads down only to come face to face with a colossal creature! He very quickly gets the old “Lights out, falling down with the no breathing and the hammana hammana to the chest” his co-worker becomes impatient that this guys been down their for so long and decides to head down there himself to see what the fuss is, but before he’s even made it halfway down the ladder, the creature tries coming for him too, ultimately getting dragged down into the sewer to his demise. The next day, Teds and Jennifer are now seemingly working together…for some reason…when Lou drops by to update him on the murders and, in doing so, he tries to subtly ask if Ted’ll come back to the force to help them figure out whats going on. Ted flat out refuses, but does offer to be something of a sounding board if Lou needs to vent.

Once again the creature strikes! This time attacking a group of teens roller skating around a multi story car park, with the only survivor of the attacks being left in a state of sheer shock and rendered mute. Lou and the team begin to investigate the scene, when Ted shows up out of the blue. He randomly kicks off at his old boss who tries to get him kicked out, and Lou has to take him to one side to calm him down and try to update him in a VERY coded way about what’s happened here. Jennifer’s also at the scene and says that she’s head from a lady called Sherry who’s reluctant to talk to the cops, but has information that might be beneficial to the case that she’ll only share with people who will give her a chance.

Jenn heads over to the rendezvous point to meet Sherry, but sherrys late for the meeting. Jennifer wanders around the rendezvous spot and accidentally meets the creature who attacks her on site! Ted gets a call from Lou informing him that Jennifers in a coma at the hospital after having an epileptic seizure from what they think is a brain tumour. Ted races to the hospital only to have what Lou said confirmed and that Jennifer cant be seen at this time..

Ted heads back to the office and immediately goes to hit the bottle, but Lou arrives just in time to talk him out of it. Around this time Sherry makes it to the office and asks if Ted and Lou will hear her out, The pair are somewhat reluctant, but at this point they’ll take anything if it helps get the case back on track. Sherry explains that she was a college graduate who worked under a Dr. Amberdean, a geneticist who’s main project was an attempt to develop a new lifeform. And; he succeeded, creating a dangerous creature that survived by drinking Spinal fluid, the doctor was convinced that, should the creature reach maturity, it would pose a serious risk to human life. Unfortunately; he died of a heart attack before the creature could be killed and the last documented notes on the creature are unclear as to it’s status..

The reason Sherry brings this up? Well..one of the side effects of the method with which the creature drains it’s victims spinal fluid is that it can make the victim appear as if they’ve had an epileptic seizure or have symptoms in line with having a brain tumour. Ted and Lou cant quite believe what they’re hearing, but they ask if Sherry knows of any way to kill the creature and all she can tell them is that she has copies of all the notes made while working with Dr. Amberdean back at her lab, in the meantime Lou goes to confirm with the coroner if all the victims have low spinal fluid levels and symptoms in line with seizures or brain tumours…which they do.

Armed with this information, they just need to figure out how the creature is able to move around the city undetected. But just as they’re gearing up, news comes from the higher ups saying the case has been closed down, likely because they want to silence any public panic. Unswayed Ted and Lou decide to investigate solo and thus we enter the final act! As Sherry finds her notes and a creature in the process, Will The gang manage to stop the SynGenOr? Will Jennifer wake up from her coma!? And when the gang find out that the SynGenOr can reproduce A-sexually, will they manage to stop a wave of creatures from enveloping the L.A streets!? All this and more will be answered if you check out, Scared to Death.

And what a conflicting movie I’ve been given to talk about today. Frustrating is probably the best word to describe it, because I really want to like this thing, I really do. But it doesnt half go about doing things that really put a strain on my feelings towards it. Chief amongst the reasons is the script itself. Which is just…problematic. For a starters, it’s a script of two halves quality wise, with the opening of the film being actually quite dry and repetitious, basically the first 30-50 minutes of this thing could best be described as “Ted does some wisecracking with Jennifer or Lou, and occasionally we see “The creature” stalk and kill some women, but without actually showing the kill on screen” it’s neat enough when it’s first established, but as it starts rowing through the motions again and again it quickly becomes apparent that they’re stalling for time, Which left me impatiently clock watching.

But! From around the time of the roller skate murders, the film DOES pick up a bit and the 2nd half, in my opinion gets enough momentum under it’s belt to deliver an interesting story that does have some nice twists and turns. I just wish they’d spread that out a bit more into the opening half. Equally not helping matters are the massive plot holes and conveniences this film has that either don’t get resolved or are just forgotten about. Jennifer is set up as a main character for this film but around 50 minutes in she gets attacked by the creature and disappears for the rest of the movie, only turning up at the very VERY end of the film for a jumpscare that did NOT win any favours with me, and we never actually get any kind of resolution for her. They just kind of go “Oh! She woke up from the coma btw!” completely missing that the point of announcing that, generally, is for some kind of express purpose, even if it’s just a reunion with Ted.

Instead we get half a film with Jennifer and half a film with Sherry, and it’s hard not to look at Sherrys involvement in the film and not think it was done out of convenience because the actress playing Jennifer either couldnt or didnt want to appear in the rest of the movie. Teds connections to the police force are referenced heavily, but never really followed up on, theres no resolution there, nor is there any resolution on the police randomly deciding to close the case. The way its inserted into the script kind of implies the police are in on the SynGenOr being a thing and that maybe they’re having some involvement in it’s attacks. But…nope. They just say the police are closing the case and it never gets referenced or bought up again.

It’s ability to reproduce A-sexually also isn’t really played out to its fullest potential either. They mention its something the SynGenOr can do, literal MOMENTS before they find a massive clutch of baby SynGenOrs (which they then promptly kill) and then that aspect of things doesnt really get bought up again. I know its a standard trope of these kind of films…y’know? The whole “You killed it! But it had a baby!” line is as old as the 40’s and 50’s in terms of sequel bait. But here? It’s so half hearted. They really don’t try to integrate it into the plot at all. Quite literally they have 1 shot where they say its a thing, 1 scene where they destroy a load of baby SynGenOrs and one POV shot implying theres more than one SynGenOr at the end. And thats the whole involvement of that plot element…all within the last 10-15 minutes I might add….

The film draws heavy inspiration from two, at the time, recent horror films “Halloween” and “Alien” and there are references to both LITTERED through this thing. With some of them bordering on letigeously similar, such as the POV shots of the creature wandering around the suburbs peeking into windows, or shots of some of the victims being “gooed” up onto the wall as a source of food for the creature and it’s offspring. I mean, theres Homaging, and then theres flat out stealing, and this film quite regularly gets PAINFULLY close to crossing that line. Regular viewers will know my distaste for films that cite more mainstream features in their movies. And while nicking some of the scenarios and cine here is a BIT better than just flat out having the characters say “Oh! Have you seen the movie Alien!? Well this creatures reminding me EXACTLY of the alien from that movie with the Alien called “Alien” it’s still not a great look.

Pacing here is a bit iffy too, with an opening half thats a SUPER slow burner that drags on setting up it’s characters, scenarios and situations, before swapping to a near breakneck 2nd half where we’re thrown a million pieces of exposition at once and because theres no time to develop those ideas, it results in the inconsistencies and plot holes mentioned previously. The three act structure isn’t as solid as i’d like it to be, the first act is pretty hard defined as is the third act. But placing where the 2nd act begins and ends is somewhat tricky. Theres no clear shift in tone, theres no moment where you can clearly see the film bed in. the 2nd act of this film feels exactly the same as the first act of the film, just with a few more creature appearances. Thats not good because you need that clear distinction between your acts in order to subconsciously tell the audience where the films up to.

A good first act establishes the characters, introduces the core scenario and moves the characters into a position where that core scenario is going to impact them in some way, the 2nd act then shows the characters engaging in that scenario while developing their personalities and even potentially establishing a character arc, unless your characters are Beavis and Butthead, it’s important that your film gives your characters purpose and growth so that they end the film in a different position to how they started. Usually either a significantly better or worse place which is usually established in the 3rd act where our characters, having engaged in the situation, are then set up with a finale that resolves the situation, or resolves their character arc. Possibly teasing more in future if there’s interest or scope to do so.

This films 2nd act meanders as it doesn’t know what to do with it’s core cast. It would have probably made more sense to introduce Sherry’s thread earlier at the beginning of the 2nd act rather than the end of it. In doing so they could have set up the SynGenOr a bit better without having to rush out all the crucial information in an exposition dump in the 3rd act AND they could have slow cooked that “corrupt police” angle a little bit more and possibly played them better into the 3rd act, which would have tied more stuff off and led to a more satisfying resolution. Instead they just kind of elongate the opening act, but quicker and a bit more violently. So we get 4 attacks instead of 2 and not a whole lot of plot development right up until the end of the Act when Sherry finally becomes a key point of the plot. Which leaves things a bit lumpy and uneven in my opinion.

The dialogue dances a VERY fine line as well, in places (particularly Teds dialogue) it’s charismatic, fluid and feels really solid, it kind of reminded me of the dialogue in “The Stuff” in the sense that it’s long flowing almost Woody Allen esq monologues that are peppered with sarcasm. But outside of those occasional glimmers, whats here is rough. A lot of it is exposition dumps, and not very well handled exposition dumps at that, most of the rest is stilted and fairly bland dialogue that fits the bill of B-movie horror perfectly well, but that in many ways is the problem. They clearly know how to write interesting dialogue because Ted and Lous pieces are both fairly solid. I have NO idea why they decided to put so little interest into the rest of the cast’s pieces. It’s baffling honestly.

The script was Co-written and Directed by William Malone, he has 18 directing credits and 6 writing credits in a career spanning 29 years, highlights include TV contributions towards “Tales from the Crypt” and the 1999 remake of “House on Haunted Hill” with his best know writing credit likely to be “Universal Soldier: The Return” His last credit was in 2008, and he hasnt been seen since. Also on Co-writing duties we have Robert Short, he has 5 writing credits, this was his first and i’d say probably his best known of the five with his last one in 2002. He’s mainly known for his work in visual effects, of which he has 23 credits with highlights including “Star trek: the motion picture” and the reboot movie of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E”

And on the direction front…well, there honestly isnt a lot to say, generally when judging a films direction, your looking both at how the director was able to manage the production in order to deliver a coherent product, AND for bonus points how the director was able to produce a work that leaves their mark on the picture. An identifier that says “This is a work of THIS director specifically” what we have here from a direction standpoint however is a film thats predominantly lifting shot types and scenes from Alien and Halloween, and whats left outside of that is at best “acceptable” if not a touch bland.

I can understand why the direction here is played so safe. Malone sold his life effectively to get this movie made, and he specifically chose to make a horror movie because he knew it was a fairly safe bet and that you could generally make something that looked good with very little budget. That coupled with the fact he previously had work in producing halloween masks for a company meant he could keep costs low on getting the main monster costume produced because… he just made it himself.

The guy put a lot on the line and wanted a safe return, so it’s understandable that the direction here would predominantly be cribbed from successful films of the last 2-5 years and whatever looked about right to put the key messages of the film across…I get that. But it doesn’t ultimately lead to an end product that I can really praise. It’s effectively cheating off someone else’s homework, and while that’s fine if you don’t get caught. If you do, it’s problematic. So in terms of creating a distinct vision it’s a big thumbs down from me.

Direction of the cast does fair a bit better, the cast are responsive, move around their set spaces decently enough and utilise props effectively, but there are plenty of points in this thing where it feels less like the director wanted to show the BEST of the cast on screen, and more like they just wanted the take. Which is understandable, but not a great viewing experience. The results….aaaaare about as interesting as you could imagine. Which again, does nothing to help really sell the film to audiences and leaves things rather lifeless for large chunks of the runtime unfortunately.

What I can say is the cine is probably the best part of this film, YES a lot of shots are stolen from other movies, but the composition in those shots can’t be faulted. In places, the lighting and use of Chiaroscuro is phenomenal for the budget. Honestly, given the money they were working with i’m amazed the thing looks half as good as it does and the only negative criticism I have about the movie is the flat profile some shots work with during the longer exposition scenes, it would have been nicer to either add a little more to the depth of field in those shots, or used more cuts to help at least make them a bit more engaging to the audience.

The only other thing I picked up on is an age old problem of movies from this era, and thats that quite a few of the night shots are massively underexposed, meaning we as an audience are effectively drenched in darkness with no idea what we’re ACTUALLY supposed to be looking at. Theres a blatant example of it at the beginning of the movie, but as the film goes on and the lighting gets more visually interesting it does pop up from time to time as a bit of a problem as the dimly lit sewer sets become increasingly frustrating to make out.

Performance wise, there are two stars of this thing really and that’s John Stinson as Ted and David Moses as Lou, the pair are constantly charismatic, have some of the best lines in the film and always try to keep animated and high energy throughout the production. They have phenomenal chemistry together and are probably the 2nd best thing about this film outside of the cine. Positively solid performances and totally memorable!

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the rest of the cast, Toni Jannotta and Diana Davidson try amicably to match the energy of their on screen counterparts as Jennifer and Sherry respectively, but neither get enough time to fully bed into the roles before they’re pulled away from us. They’re notable, just. The rest of the supporting cast drop below even that and are just SO bland. Don’t even get me started they’re cookie cutter extras who are there to look a bit scared, do their screamy bit and maybe talk to the main cast for a couple of lines, they’re totally unremarkable for this genre and it’s a real shame as its stuff like that that helps lift a mediocre film into a great one.

And finally; the soundtrack. Which is actually surprisingly solid as well! It’s an experimentally synthy piece that suits the tone of the film perfectly, it sets the tone and mood which results in even some of the more inane shots being given just a bit more of a sinister edge. Its a good solid work that stands out (which is odd given the film’s dedication to conformity within the genre) and one that, while I wouldn’t want to listen to in isolation, I absolutely enjoyed as part of this film.

Scared to death was released in 1980 and Malones first distribution sale not only managed to pay off the costs of the film but netted him a tidy profit when he agreed a play deal with Malasia for $90k. It struggled initially to find distribution in the states before the rights eventually landed with “Lone Star Pictures” who distributed the movie to most drive ins across the US (Something Malone was unaware of when he attended the premier in texas expecting a proper theatrical experience and effectively arrived in a back lot wearing a tuxedo).

It would arrive on UK shores in 1981 and was passed uncut in may of that year, later receiving a VHS release by Avatar in late 1981, unaffected by the 1984 video recordings act it remained in circulation until it finally received a DVD release also by Avatar in 2002 which is the copy i’ve used. It’s rough on the Picture quality and the sound quality is up and down as well sounding hissy and tinny. The only extras to speak of are a trailer and an interactive menu with scene select so, it’s quite the budget release. Luckily! In 2022 Vinegar syndrome re-released the film with a ground up remaster on bluray and it looks delightful fixing almost all picture and sound quality issues with the previous release. While it isnt perfect, it’s the best this films likely to look AND it has a making of, location tour and a new cut of the film that supposedly tightens it up a bit alongside a couple of other extras to help sweeten the deal, which works for me!

I Think had I paid the $30+ it would have cost to import the Vinegar Syndrome version of this film over to the Uk I’d have probably been harsher on it. At that price point i’d have considered myself robbed for this film. But the version I ended up picking up cost me £3 and for that, I feel I can be a lot nicer about it. Its far from perfect, with an opening that was slowburn, decent cine and direction that’s been screwed over by a dry and repetitive script, and a second half that finally allowed the script to come into its own, but left the direction and cine high and dry after such a promising opening. Nice lighting, some decent performances and a good soundtrack help to just about get this movie over the line in my opinion, but ultimately this was a feature I could have taken or left. I’m more than curious to see what the new Directors cut offers in terms of tightening the film up a bit, but it’ll be a while before I go back to this one to check it out. I’m not gonna say avoid this one. But I wouldn’t say it was a priority watch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/scared-to-death-1980/1/