Rainey Dawn
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
Wizard-8
For a low budget Crown-International movie, it may come as a surprise that while this movie can't be considered "great" or "good", it does have a fair number of effective moments. The ghost town makes a nice creepy location, especially with the night-time shooting. The middle of the movie, when the character of Ken suffers one terrifying moment after another while pursuing (or being pursued by) the hooded figure is a tense sequence.But the movie doesn't quite work overall. The first third of the movie is somewhat slow for the most part. There are some stupid decisions by the characters, like with Ken having several opportunities to escape the area but staying. And as it's been pointed by other people in this user comments section, it's pretty easy to figure out who the masked figure is before the "surprise" revelation. Still, while the movie isn't overall successful, it can't really be considered a "BAD" movie. If it's a slow night, and you want to see how low budget filmmakers can overcome their limited funds with creativity, you might find this movie entertaining enough.
kevin olzak
1962's "Terrified" was one of several Crown International pictures that debuted on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater in 1976 (February 19, 1977 to be exact), paired with second feature "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," from 1964. A production whose poverty stricken budget restricts the settings to a deserted Western ghost town and its creepy cemetery, but with a script that would have been commonplace some two decades later during the teen slasher cycle of the early 1980s. Directed by serial veteran Lew Landers, whose prior features included 1935's "The Raven" and 1943's "The Return of the Vampire" (both with Lugosi), a rather fitting conclusion to a busy career as an action specialist, although it cannot claim to be well paced. The idea of a hooded maniac stalking his victims has become quite a cliché since the early sixties, but this appears to be the first horror film that used it. We begin at the ghost town's cemetery with a helpless screaming victim lying in an open grave as his unknown tormentor pours cement over him, driving him insane. Next, we meet our tiny cast in a small coffee shop, who drive back to the deserted cemetery and discover the still warm corpse of the caretaker, obviously a victim of murder. As the young couple drive away to contact the sheriff (Denver Pyle), their friend, Ken Lewis (Rod Lauren, "The Crawling Hand"), inexplicably remains behind, stubbornly facing up to his own fears as he loses just about every scuffle with the hooded killer, who delights in terrorizing his prey, all of whom have close ties to Marge (Tracy Olsen), the sister of the first victim (who has conveniently escaped the asylum to go after his assailant). Once everyone convenes at the ghost town, the film remains just as trapped as the frightened characters, who simply don't behave in the most logical fashion, especially Ken, who seems to be under the impression that the killer is Marge's brother. There is one major subplot that is dropped halfway in, that of a crazed motorist who delights in running people off the road. This is how the sheriff first becomes involved, but nothing ever comes of it, and no explanation is offered as to who it was, except that it's not the character under the hood, an unforgivable sin. The killer's identity is hardly a major surprise, and Italian horror films quickly adopted the idea of a hooded maniac (1964's "Blood and Black Lace"), but it remains an interesting artifact ahead of its time, all but forgotten today. Chiller Theater aired this film three more times as a solo feature, on August 11 1979, July 26 1980, and October 10 1981, with much of the Crown International catalog scarcely seen on the airwaves since ("Twisted Brain" aka "Horror High" lasted the longest, long championed by Elvira).
dbborroughs
Cheap drive-in shocker about a ski masked maniac running around a small town, the adjoining ghost town and and cemetery scaring people to the extreme before killing them.Good small scale horror film is genuinely creepy with a nice feeling of tension running all through it. The film's one weakness is its sets which look very much like sets, the ghost town looks like the frontage of a western street scene at night and the cemetery is in no way realistic. If you can go with it and give the film's sets a pass the story and the performances will carry you along pleasantly to the end.Worth a look.
