Scared Stiff
Scared Stiff
R | 23 October 1987 (USA)
Scared Stiff Trailers

Kate's a single mom rock star recovering from a nervous breakdown; David is her psychiatrist turned lover. After David buys an old Charleston mansion and Kate and her son move in with him, strange events occur including the discoveries of a secret hidden attic and the diary of the murderous slave trader who owned the home. Kate hears a piano playing by itself and sees the ghost of the slave trader who once lived there. Their relationship is strained by the bizarre events as Kate's sanity is again questioned as she insists what she's seen is real...but is it?

Reviews
loomis78-815-989034

A prologue takes us to 1857 where an evil slave trader named George Masterson (Ramsey) has a curse put on him by his wife and some slaves in the attic of his house. The slaves give the wife a stone that will protect her and her son from the evil George. Jump 130 years and Dr. David Young (Stevens) moves into the same house with his girlfriend Kate (Keller) who at one time was a mental patient of his and her son (Segal). Kate starts having nightmares and hallucinations while David starts becoming abusive and acting like the former owner of the house. This is pretty standard low budget fair for the mid 1980's. There are a lot of nightmares (the Elm Street influence) but some of them are effective at getting a few good scares. Masterson is a good old fashioned monster and his visions and appearance is unsettling and scary. The movie splits in two with Kate and her boy having nightmares and David being possessed by Masterson's spirit. This gives the movie a very uneven feel and would have worked better as a whole if they had chosen one clear path. Still, Director Richard Friedman has some good moments like the ending dream state Kate and her son are in, is quite unpredictable and manages some suspense. Stevens is very wooden in the lead role which doesn't help. Scared Stiff is good as a decent time waster which will deliver a few scares and chills along the way.

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preppy-3

Dreadful, justly obscure ghost story. Mary Page Keller and Andrew Stevens play a couple who move into a haunted house. Then Stevens is possessed by a ghost and begins to kill people...or something like that. To be honest I had trouble staying awake so the story is kind of vague.Dumb, by the numbers "horror" film loaded with false scares and stupid sequences. Like a workman, working outside the house, is killed and hung...and supposedly hangs there for days on end with no one noticing. Or Keller has a pointless dream sequence where a co worker slashes her throat...and leads to nothing. It's only in there to throw some cheap gore into our face.Keller (who can be good) is lousy and Stevens (who has never been good) is even worse. Dull and pointless. Avoid.

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callanvass

dumb flick is silly and laughable and poor,y made and written and suffers from all kinds of cliches it has boring dialog way too talky first half laughable scenes that are supposed to be suspenseful but turn out to be laughable and the acting is not all that great Andrew Stevens does okay but is in a terrible movie not much ya can do there Mary Page Keller had awful dialog to spurt out and wasn't all that great we also have a child actor that is ugly and gap toothed i have no problems with that but i have a problem with whiny kids they irritate me which is why i won't be having kids when i get married right away anyway back to the review and plus this has done before lots of times and done better at that! also there is a funny moment where those toy cars come to life and start working and another laughable moment when the kid smashes a light bulb on the Stevens head it looked so fake he hardly even hit him! it also has plenty of gore in fact lots of it but it looks laughable and the finale is way to silly for it's own good overall a cheesy bore not worth it! AVOID!!! BOMB out of 5

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brandonsites1981

Awful film about a family moving into a new house and falling prey to a rubber faced African voodoo monster that possesses Andrew Stevens and forces him to kill his family. The special effects are really that terrible, the entire cast is bland, and the situations that unfold in the film are a laugh riot. Good to watch and make fun of, otherwise avoid this piece of junk masquerading as a horror film. Rated R.

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