Scared to Death (William Malone, 1980)

"They wanted to create a new form of human life... They failed."

Michigander (yes, that is an actual word.  As are Michiganite [boring] and the frankly wonderful Michigine) William Malone has carved out a smallish but perfectly formed corpus in the horror genre over his sadly sporadic career with a limited number of movies in the forty five years since 1980 - a period of mere months longer than my entire lifespan.  They may, like love, come in short spurts (of ten CCs, I'm led to believe) but they're great when they do.  The five feature films Malone has helmed over that time (not counting made for TV movies and episodes of series) include 1985's superior Alien clone Creature (a.k.a. The Titan Find) - a film in which guest star Klaus Kinski is a far more terrifying presence than Robert and Dennis Skotak's animatronic xenomorph (a test run for the work they would do a year later on James Cameron's Aliens, in a pleasing symmetry) could hope to be - as well as the 1999 House on Haunted Hill (one of those oh-so-rare things: a remake that is better than the original), 2002's interwebs-based thriller FeardotCom (bizarrely originally an erotic vehicle for Zalman King of Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and Delta of Venus [whatever happened to Audie England, by the way?] fame) and 2008's Parasomnia; a film that features Kathryn Leigh Scott as a character named Margaret Evans and is therefore canon in the Dark Shadows universe.  I insist.  I truly do.

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More so than that fucking Burton / Depp abomination, anyway.  I'm still a bit annoyed about that, even though it had Alice Cooper's 'The Ballad of Dwight Fry' [sic] on the soundtrack.

But it all started with Scared to Death, also known by sundry other titles including Scared to Death: Syngenor (on its eventual DVD release, presumably to link it with the belated and not good [despite the lovely Starr Andreef being in it] 1990 sequel Syngenor) and The Aberdeen Experiment (though there is no granite or Doric to be found within).  Made fresh out of film school (Malone studied at U.C.L.A. after being obsessed with genre cinema from a young age, crafting his own home-made monster masks as a kid before working at the renowned Don Post studio where he came up with the idea of adapting one of Post's William Shatner Captain Kirk masks into the white-painted visage of Michael Myers / The Shape for John Carpenter's classic 1978 Halloween) on a scraped-together budget of circa $74,000 raised from Malone mortgaging his house and selling his car, the film was already in profit before release due to securing a $90,000 deal for the East Asian market through distribution company Lone Star (who had put up $40,000 towards the movie's four-week shoot).

Beginning with a ludicrously portentous attempt at grounding the phantasy we are about to see with the text caption "PROLOGUE: The events portrayed in this film, although fictional, are based on scientific fact.  If they have not already happened, they soon could.  Genetic engineering is real.  And soon we may all have to deal with new values and definitions of life and death.", we move with a P.O.V. tracking shot through the sewers as a clue to us dealing with a C.H.U.D. four years earlier than Douglas Cheek's seminal subterranean shlocker before moving overground wombling free to a shot prowling around a house and peering (and perving) upon the young woman within that could make Dean Cundey sue cinematographer Patrick Prince, so reminiscent of the opening of Carpenter's '78 Halloween is it.  Except this time we don't just get Judith Myers' sideboob, as our opening victim Janie Richter (Pamela Bowman, who IMDb informs had a part as a 'Fleshette' in the same year's Ultra Flesh alongside Seka, Jamie Gillis and Lisa De Leeuw - there's one to add to the watchlist - and who I recently saw in an episode of HBO's extremely '80s T&A filled anthology series The Hitchhiker) treats us to a brief bit of full-frontal nudity before slipping into her scarlet satin scanties while chatting on the phone to her boyfriend, all the while illuminated by crimson Suspiria-esque lamplight.

Going to investigate the prowler who's been point-of-viewing around her property, armed only with a solitary candle like Deborah Kerr from The Innocents - if she'd been American and dressed in her underwear - Janie meets her end at the hands of a pretty impressive monster; it manages to resemble both a post-Alien H. R. Giger xenomorph (or, possibly, a decade and a half early Species one) and a 1950s Roger Corman man in a rubber suit creature feature antagonist at the same time depending on the lighting and camera setup.  The cops are swiftly on the scene - finding an unknown and unidentifiable sticky substance strewn around (not surprised really, she was a bonny lass) - to investigate this tragedy, the latest in a string of murders, and Detective Lou Capell (David Moses) turns to ex-cop turned pulp novelist-cum-private investigator - and possibly also part-time gentleman, scholar and acrobat on the side - Ted Londergan (John Stinson, substituting for rock singer Rick Springfield - the future original incarnation of Nick Knight having signed up and then dropped out of the role at the last minute).  Londergan, our corduroy-clad hero, is introduced as a loose cannon; the kind of protagonist beloved of cop shows that have the character of 'the Chief' growing ever more apoplectic and exasperated with his off-the-books antics but gets the job done.  He's also a bit of a knob to be honest, as evidenced by his attitude when he is asked by Capell, his ex-partner, to come on board the case.  He's also a BOAK (bit of a knob) during the meet-cute - more like meet-infuriating - with the film's female lead and love interest Jennifer Stanton (the lovely Diana Davidson in sadly her only screen role aside from an uncredited part in Dirty Harry almost a decade earlier).  I get the feeling that we're supposed to find Londergan's antics quirky and endearing, but it really isn't working for me.  Others' mileage will invariably vary, I may just not have been in the right mood - like Tommy Lee Jones on the set of Batman Forever - to sanction his buffoonery.

After initially refusing Capell's plea to aid with the investigation Ted has a change of heart when, after belying her seemingly sensible and head screwed on image by sleeping with this obvious sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder, Jennifer becomes one of the beast's victims - after a series of attacks including rending a teen asunder inside her car after only tearing the bloody doors off and squeezing a sewage worker's skull ("I crush your head - I pinch your face") - and left comatose.  And not the kinda coma you wake up from with Johnny Smith style psychic powers.

Teaming up with disgruntled - did you ever meet a gruntled one? - ex-laboratory employee at the Amberdine Research Facility Sherry Carpenter (Toni Jannotta) to stop the monster's reign of terror which includes such antisocial behaviour as homing in on a gang of roller skating youths and doing what we're all thinking by using its lethal tongue on Joleen Porcaro's lovely brunette Kelly (thoughts and prayers for the rollergirl to go along with Rick King's 1990 Prayer of the Rollerboys), he - and through him, we - find that that the Syngenor (synthetic genetic organism) is an engineered life form that feeds on the spinal fluid of its victims.  I'm more into GILFs than GELFs myself, but Ted is very eager to get his hands on this slippery sucker with a thirst for bodily fluids.  Jeez. your girlfriend's been hospitalised for a few hours and you're already out scouring the sewers for a replacement. 

I couldn't help thinking that the sight of our protagonist clad in corduroy descending into the sewers is quite reminiscent of the teacher-cum-rodent fighter lead in Deadly Eyes, the disappointing 1982 adaptation of James Herbert's 1974 pulp horror classic 'when nature attacks' rodent rampage The Rats in all of its disappointing glory.  At least this has a well-realised monster rather than little dogs in vermin maquillage; plus one for the Syngenor.

First escaping onto the silver screen of dreams and screams in France in November of 1980 with its domestic release in March of 1981,  wasn't initially sure whether to have this down as a 1980 flick or a 1981 one.  Josh Spiegel opts for the latter, having its entry in the '81 volume of his ongoing and quite magnificent The 80's Project, but I figured that I'd go with the former date just because I'm different.  And it just feels like a 1980 film to me for whatever that's worth.

Originally released on home video by Media Home Entertainment, a company established by Charles Band later of Empire Pictures and Full Moon Entertainment legend, Scared to Death would also make its DVD debut under its modified title of Scared to Death: Syngenor to connect it with the aforementioned semi-sequel (I call it that not just because aside from the creatures themselves there's zero narrative or character connective tissue between the two films, but also because Starr Andreef never failed to give me at least a semi-on).

Not exactly a well-remember genre classic etched into the formative memories of a generation of fright fans like many of its contemporaries, Scared to Death nevertheless is a well-made debut from a director who would go on to make more memorable movies that boasts at the very least a good atmosphere and a striking central creature that registers high on the H. R. Giger counter and would become a mainstay of Halloween monster masks.  Given Malone's start working for Don Post and making such hideous visages, surely that's a satisfying legacy in anyone's book.