Terrified (1963) Reviews

• Terrified

  Scarecrow-882009-11-19

  Lew Landers(Return of the Vampire;The Raven)directed his final film with Terrified, a rather dialogue heavy chiller regarding a weirdo wearing a black silk stocking mask and well tailored suit terrorizing a young man named Ken(Rod Lauren)in and around a western ghost town and nearby graveyard. The nearby town drunk known as Crazy Bill has been impaled on the graveyard gate with locals David(Steve Drexel)and restaurant waitress Marge(Tracy Olsen)off to fetch the police as Ken searches for the killer, while also hoping to confront and overcome fear(..his father was hard on him for being "weak" always complaining of his supposed cowardice). A recent escaped loony named Joey(..seen at the beginning being buried under cement by the killer who mockingly laughs at the bound and subdued kid frightened out of his gourd)is thought to be prowling the ghost town and Ken wonders if it's him who is all over the area tormenting him. The killer plays a cat-and-mouse game with Ken, sneaking around, often assaulting him from behind. When the killer finally starts to bury him alive in a grave with dirt, will David and Marge come to his rescue? Or is he doomed to be overwhelmed by the fear that permeates within? Shot in basically four major locations(..the ghost town, restaurant, diner, and inside the cab of a car), Terrified consists of characters talking, talking, and talking some more. That and the entire middle portion with poor Ken running around the ghost town, trying to avoid the psychopath on the loose, toying with the kid. It's funny that David and Marge head off to call the sheriff and aren't in that big of hurry to get back knowing that Ken has remained where a killer lurks. There's great emphasis on fear to the point where it gets a bit heavy-handed. One thing's for certain, Landers squeezes every bit out of the western ghost town that he can get, shooting all over this set..it's a pretty cool little set, too. I'm guessing this low budget B-movie was shot in some back lot or small studio because so much of it is set at the ghost town with characters moving about hearing noises and seeing the killer shoot across them, hiding somewhere else. Stephen Roberts has a supporting role, as a restaurant owner, Wesley Blake, Marge's boss, and his confession of lust to her, revealing the pervert that he is, is rather amusing and warped..the dialogue is bound to provide some chuckles. It's only appropriate that the showdown between Ken and the killer would take place in this abandoned town on the outskirts of civilization. I'm guessing Terrified will bore some into a stooper, but I rather enjoyed the ghost town set, how ratty and rundown it is, cobwebs and rotted wood. The graveyard is also a nice edition to the movie. I can see why Landers would shoot most of the film here, with other scenes basically providing exposition informing us of certain plot elements such as Marge's father, Ken's dilemma, the love triangle between the principals, Crazy Bill's reputation, and Joey's circumstances. It all gets a bit too talky for my taste, but there are inspired moments here and there..Landers has certainly made better films, but had an eye for atmospheric set pieces.

• Has its moments

  Wizard-82012-01-07

  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.

• Seen on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1977

  kevinolzak2011-02-10

  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).

• Extreme creepiness on a very low budget

  ginbelt2005-11-01

  I first saw this film, like others have, on TV late at night years ago -- I think I was maybe 13 or 14 and had been sick in bed all day, watching TV. The film made such a strong impression on me that I thought of it many times over the years and all through the following decade, I would scan the TV listings in vain hoping for a rerun. I never did see it on TV ever again, but was able, back in the early 90's, to buy up a VHS copy from somebody who'd similarly taped it off a TV station. I gave Terrified a "10" not because I think it is on a par technically with, say, "Citizen Kane", or "Vertigo", but because it is, I feel, about as an effective film I can imagine being done on the nickels and dimes budget this film must have had. When I say "effective" I mean, this is a horror film (albeit a b&W, early 60's low budget horror film), and the film is ~scary~. Scary in a creepy, eerie vibe kind of way. I think evilskip's review of 6/15/2001 really says it best, correctly describing the sense of isolation in the film and the weird sounds (I like the use of piano too here). This film proves that "low-budget" doesn't have to mean "low quality". I'm glad I have it on tape and do play it now and again. I've played it for friends too and they agree with me that it has a genuinely creepy aura about it. Fans of William Castle films from the same era would like this.

• A Lost Lew Landers Gem?

  gavin69422010-10-24

  A college psychology student, intent on writing a term paper on how much terror the human mind can endure, learns his answers first-hand as he finds himself the target of a mysterious, hooded killer. The film opens with the Fallen Angel Saloon, and the masked killer burying someone alive in a graveyard. The killer's eyes are bright and furious -- absolutely terrifying. And then cut to some nice title credits. Director Lew Landers is many years past his prime here (1935-1944). This film claims to be released in 1963... when Landers would already have been dead, possibly suggesting it was finished without him. And horror reference books seem to know nothing of this one, unfortunately. (This was, as it turns out, Landers' final film.) The sound on the Mill Creek disc is fuzzy, but the picture seems okay for the most part. This could be cleaned up, hopefully, if anyone ever wanted to give this a proper release. I also love that there is a character referred to only as "Crazy Bill".