One of the best films i have seen

good back-story, and good acting

Better Late Then Never

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

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.

Scared Stiff is definitely a film that most B horror fans should venture into seeing. It literally has EVERYTHING. Horrible editing, awful acting, a script that goes nowhere, off the wall gore (at the end), and an incredible silly ending!Kate, David and Kate's son move into and old house. Kate is an actress and David is a therapist. When they move into this house things start going very strange as Kate starts seeing things, along with her son. It turns out that the house they moved into belonged to an evil man that tortured slaves back in the late 1800's. As the family stays in the house lounger, the more possessed David becomes.I have a soft spot for movies like this. Yes, it was a terrible film. No doubt about that. But, did I enjoy this film... I would have to say yes. For fans of a genre long dead this is definitely worth seeing as the story is actually not half bad. It is everything else that brings this movie down. Example: there is a scene in which a man is hanging outside of a window. We get a close up of his face for roughly 15 seconds. At the end of the scene, we see the mans eyes move. Truly poor editing. If you watch this movie you will see many inconsistencies. For me, that is what gives it its charm.Goofy movie that is well worth watching for all of you 80's horror fans. 6/10

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.

Could it be the workman, hanging undiscovered outside a boy's screenless window? He hangs there by his neck for days, perhaps weeks without being found, despite being in clear view from the outside, despite being less than a foot away from the boy's window; shouldn't there be flies? shouldn't the smell be intense?But no, as you might suspect, it is this movie that stinks - stinks real bad. Whether its Andrew Stevens typical performance as...Andrew Stevens, or the Comic Relief Cop, or the Negroid (!) Slaveowner Werebeast, or the Giant Kitsch Indian Head Lamp, or, or, or...oh man, it's too bad to go on.Miss it, unless you want to kill some time, and have a few (not many) laughs or groans at this painful wreck.