Good movie but grossly overrated

A Masterpiece!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Another minor thriller that has it's ups and downs. Some scenes are really good, others are just long and boring. They could have cut off the extra 21 minutes and made an hour long film out of this one easily and made a film that more people would be apt to watch or like better.It's not a haunted house as the plot summary suggests, it's a place that looks like it could be in a haunted house film. So the plot summary is misleading in that way but it is true a masked "someone" is killing people (and I won't say who that someone is).It's far from an awful 'B' film but it's not one you would call really good either, it's so-so at best. If you happen upon this film it is worth a watch but don't expect a lot out of it. The poster and the film's summary is a bit better than the film really is.Best parts of the film are the opening and the scene with the spiders.4/10

"Terrified!" actually has a pretty effective opening setup, with a masked killer burying a young male victim alive in wet cement.(That's a pretty awful way to go). The scene is well done, builds to a climax, and packs quite a punch. Alas, it's pretty much downhill from there.I give the director and the photographer credit for making the most out of their sets and their budget - the "Ghost Town" is well used, and the stark black and white cinematography helps the movie look a lot better than it actually is. What kills the movie: 1) anyone who has ever watched a mystery movie will be able to figure out who the masked killer is in the first 15 minutes. It's simply a matter of "economy of characters". So the final "revelation" of his identity doesn't pack all that much of a punch. 2) The central idea for the screenplay reads like something written by someone who has no idea what so-called "college students" actually do in their classes. Or in their spare time. Especially psychology students. I graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from an accredited state university, and I never once tried to write a paper on "terror and the human mind" as an undergraduate. Let alone a mid-term. Let me correct any mistaken impressions left by this movie: Psychology majors spend all their time fractionating rat's brains,taking statistics courses, reading books about the DSM IV, and trying to devise "double blind" experiments on students in the Psych 101 classes. They do NOT play "cat and mouse" with masked killers in abandoned "Ghost Towns".3) The central "motor" of the movie, the running struggle between Ken and the masked figure, isn't staged with any conviction or decent fight choreography. It lacks any real sense of urgency or conviction, at least to someone who has sat through many similar movies. The director needed to either review what he learned from Hitchcock movies or else he needed better stunt people. 4) The cast isn't actually bad, especially for this kind of movie. But huge chunks of the dialog were about past events we never see (you need to "show" people key events, not just "tell" them) and I kept getting yanked out of the movie by what I tend to call the "No Human Beings Ever Talked Like This" factor. The actors just can't salvage the dialog and make the most contrived lines work.Still, I've seen much worse. In fact I've seen much worse in the same "Gorehouse Greats" 12 movie collection this movie came in. In its favor "Terrified!" is easily the first or second best movie of the 6 I've seen in the collection. (It was 12 movies for 5 dollars. I wasn't expecting Coppola).

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.

I just saw "Terrified" for the first time on Rhino's "Horrible Horrors" collection. It was really quite good. Sure, it was super low budget and kind of stupid, but the villain gave me the willies. He runs around this ghost town in a suit and cape (I think) and he wears a hood (or is it a ski mask?) that only shows his eyes. The thing about it that truly creeped me out was that he ran in and out of scenes really fast and for some reason this was actually scary...I don't know why that is. Maybe it made him completely unpredictable. He didn't do any of the usual things these guys do when they stalk someone. He kept letting people go and then would recapture them and so on...all with this creepy whisper voice and super disturbing giggle. He was also a real kick-*** fighter! There's this one fight in a cave that looks almost like it's a real fight. You can tell this one actor is really trying to get away (or he's just an excellent actor...kind of a poor man's James Dean). It's sort of a re-working of "Phantom of the Opera" and there's a touching denouement on the part of the guy playing the villain. But I have to say, if I'm ever in a ghost town after sundown, I just may be looking over my shoulder, and I just may be...Terrified!