Rather than use his scientific genius to benefit mankind, a genetics expert creates a vicious synthesised life-form that uses its forked tongue to drain the spinal fluid of its victims. Why? I dunno… must've seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose. Cop turned novelist Ted Lonergan (John Stinson) helps his police pal Lou (David Moses) to investigate.This one starts out in classic B-movie monster mode with a naked blonde babe slipping into sexy, silky red underwear before becoming another victim of the Syngenor (Synthesised Genetic Organism). Its a fun, trashy way to kick things off, but the rest of the film offers very little to get excited about: lots of dull chit chat, a few gore-free deaths, and some roller-skating, all leading to the inevitable showdown between Ted and the incredibly slow moving H.R.Giger-style creature in a factory (an ending that might possibly have influenced The Terminator!).Missable stuff, unless you absolutely have to see every movie inspired in some way by Ridley Scott's Alien.

William Malone didn't exactly deliver a good movie here. Far from, actually, but heck, it was his first one. Still, you'll have to tolerate some atrocious 'chop-chop' editing, some bad acting and a plot way too basic for its own good. All the events in this film move at the pace of a snail that's stuck in the mud. The whole story is played by the book, and it's one with not many pages in it (just enough to write down the premise: a murderous creature is loose in the city and two people must stop it). Surprisingly, things do remain watchable most of the time, somehow. The creature design is pretty cool, but also nothing more than a man in a rubber suit. A bit of full frontal female nudity during the opening-scene and a lack of gore throughout the entire film is what we get. But my guess is that it's still worth a watch for lovers of obscure creature features (honestly, I myself didn't mind watching it). "Scared To Death" always seemed to me a bit of a stupid, unsuitable title for this kind of film though. Given the place where the creature resides, why not dub it... "The Sewer Dweller"? Malone's first outing even got some sort of a semi-(un)official sequel nine years later, called "Syngenor" (1990). Would have been much easier if they had called that one "Syngenor 2" and this one simply "Syngenor". Aw, what the hell am I talking about.

A lethal scientific mistake called a Syngenor (an acronym for Synthetic Genetic Organism) makes its home in the Los Angeles sewer system and occasionally comes out to either stick its slimy forked tongue down people's throats so it can feast on their spinal fluid or drag various unfortunate folks underground to feed its grotesque shellfish-like offspring. Dorky ex-cop turned bestselling novelist Ted Lonergan (an engaging performance by John Stinson) and attractive genetics student Sherry Carpenter (the fetching Toni Janotta, who resembles a young Barbara Steele) go after the malevolent humanoid reptilian monster (Kermit Eller in a nifty rubber suit) while the police make fools out of themselves trying to figure out the baffling clues. This really fun and lively earthbound "ALIEN" clone starts out rather sluggishly, but still winds up delivering the satisfying creature feature goods with an especially stirring and suspenseful conclusion. Writer/director William Malone, who went on to helm the big budget "House on Haunted Hill" remake and the dreadful "FearDotCom," keeps the pace moving at a reasonably brisk clip, only slowing things down for a few dreary dialogue scenes and a boring romance between Lonergan and girlfriend Jennifer Stanton (the lovely Diana Davidson) that are sandwiched between the pleasingly snappy and fairly gruesome beast attack set pieces. Moreover, the sequences in the sewer have a genuinely creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere to them, the monster is very cool, and the film overall has a certain earnest quality to it that's both endearing and entertaining.

The year is 1981 and most people are making slasher movies, but SCARED TO DEATH is a twist on the serial killer, slasher type movie. Even though it has got to be the dumbest movie title ever. But the creature in the movie is cool and unique. The story is somewhat a-typical, but predictable doesn't always mean bad. All the jumps are all in the right place and all the kills are all in the right place. Basically it's pretty cool movie, once you overlook the stupid title. The characters are a little on the weak side, and the film quality could have been much better, even for the time period. But all and all the style of the movie, the look of the creature and the characters all make the movie worth while. I give SCARED TO DEATH 9 STARS.