College student Ken Lewis(Rod Lauren)is writing a paper on terror and how much the human brain can take before snapping. He will get the opportunity to find out first hand. Someone is terrorizing motorist on the highway. But is this masked maniac involved with citizens being buried alive in a ghost town's cemetery? The story line is interesting for a low budget horror flick. The main set being the ghost town is atmospheric, but the cemetery scenes are pretty lame and unrealistic. TERRIFIED has its tense moments and is not a total waste. Acting leaves something to be desired. Players also include: Tracy Olsen, Steve Drexel, Stephen Roberts and Denver Pyle as Sheriff Dixon.

"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.

Terrified (1963) *** (out of 4)As one character explains, fear is the ultimate weapon that will force countries to fight one another and force one person to kill another. If someone has fear then they can be destroyed or destroy anyone in their way. A small town is being stalked by a maniac wearing a mask and this maniac likes to use fear as his weapon. One way of gaining fear is by playing chicken on the road forcing people to make up their mind on which way to turn the wheel. Another way to gain fear is by burying the victims alive so they can slowly count their final seconds before their air supply is gone.Terrified is a wonderfully entertaining picture that goes on the same tactics used by director William Castle. In this film, the director tries every way possible to make the viewer feel uneasy and the entire film is about making the viewer go into a state of fear. The film certainly isn't horrifying but it does contain some wonderful atmosphere and some incredibly well directed scenes that do add a bit of eeriness, which makes this a perfect little sleeper that not too many have seen.There's a wonderful sequence in the middle of the film where the maniac is stalking a victim inside a house. As the victim tries to make an escape, the maniac slowly walks behind him closing any door he goes through so that the victim can't go back but instead he must continue going forward where he will eventually be out of places to run. This scene lasts a good ten minutes and the thing gets more nail biting as every new door is closed. The one problem with the film is that there are way too many dialogue scenes where characters are trying to predict who the killer is. This here really takes away some of the tension and it would have played better without the characters guessing at who the maniac is. There's a shorter version of this movie available that is missing this dialogue so perhaps that version would be even better. This DVD contains the uncut, 79-minute version of the film.