Terrified!

So school has started and I have been neglecting the Gorehouse Greats collection. Mostly because I have been held prisoner by Tenango for the past three days and do not have access to them. However, before my kidnapping I did manage to watch Terrified! and yes, the exclamation point is completely necessary. I'd give you a basic outline of the plot but frankly, I could not tell you what the hell the plot was supposed to be.

The movie opens with a terrified (ah, I get it) young man being buried alive in concrete by some sort of crazy person with a hood obscuring his face. An older gentleman is in the background, just sort of watching it happen. Like a douche. We then see a couple driving along the road, sputtering some insipid bullshit about something or other. I'm sorry, after watching five of these movies before this I pretty much just tune out most of the dialogue. As they are driving, another car approaches them from the other direction, then moves into their lane and drives right toward them. The wife of the couple freaks out but for some reason the husband is oddly calm about the whole thing. This is not some subtle plot point, I'm pretty sure he was just a terrible actor. They arrive at a restaurant and... hold on. I just realized a major hole in the story, but I'll tell you about it later. The couple talks to the owner of the restaurant, a man named Wesley Blake. Meanwhile, Marge, the hostess of the restaurant is sitting with her boyfriend David and being harassed by two random jerks. Then they leave, having served no purpose in the story. A few minutes later, Marge's other boyfriend, Ken, walks in and explains that he too almost got run off the road by the same crazy driver. They also discuss the man with the black mask from the opening sequence. Apparently the young man who was being buried alive in concrete was Joey, Marge's brother and Ken's best friend. He somehow survived being buried up to his neck in concrete but his mind was broken and he was admitted to a mental hospital. So, I guess there was no physical damage from being buried alive in fucking concrete and then presumably removed with jackhammers. Apparently the older gentleman who watched it go down is a man named Crazy Bill, who lives at a place called Ghost Town. They never really explain what the hell this place is, but it is filled with old western style buildings and is next to a cemetery. Marge decides she wants to go talk to Crazy Bill about what happened to Joey or something. Ken, who is a psychology student doing a paper on the nature of terror, doesn't want to go to Ghost Town because it reminds him of the loss of his best fried Joey. Now, Joey was also Marge's brother but that's not stopping her from going there with her other, non-pussy boyfriend. Mr. Blake makes a comment to Ken about the fact that David might steal Marge from him. Meanwhile, David tells Marge that he doesn't like her dating Ken. I think she is supposed to just be Ken's girlfriend, but she is also dating David. The whole thing is really fucking confusing. Especially when Marge falls asleep in the car and David just starts making out with her while she sleeps. So they get to Ghost Town and, even though they know exactly where Crazy Bill lives, they decide to fuck around in the old, dilapidated buildings for a while. Marge reveals that she is just as much of a pussy as Ken, although it is justified because she is a woman and Ken is (allegedly) a man. While exploring one of the old shacks, David falls through the floor. While he is down there something touches Marge's face and she freaks the fuck out. Then the funeral march starts playing mysteriously and so finally they decide to actually go to Crazy Bill's house. Back in town, the Hollys (the old couple from before) report the crazy driver to the police. The old man angrily informs the sheriff that his wife is upset. The sheriff calmly informs them that this driver just likes to scare people and misses on purpose. Meanwhile Marge and David walk into Crazy Bill's house, uninvited, and David announces their presence by saying "It's David. I've got Marge with me." They see a shadow and this prompts Marge to say "Bill! It's Marge, I'm with David." My guess is that Crazy Bill always thought that Marge and David was a better pairing than Marge and Ken and so they are trying to reassure him that they are together. Either that or the person responsible for writing the dialogue in this movie is an idiot. Throughout all this Marge and David find no evidence that Bill is there, yet remain convinced that he is just fucking with them. Maybe the reason he is called "Crazy" is because he routinely abandons his house with the front door unlocked and then hides when people come in unless they are in the appropriate pairings. However, it turns out that Crazy Bill is dead. Marge and David find his body impaled on one of those spiky Gothic fences. His body is still warm, and so they decide to go tell the sheriff that the killer is, in fact, at the place he was most likely to be at. Back at their car they see that Ken has overcome his fear and go look for Joey. Which seems weird at first until we learn roughly ten minutes later that Joey escaped from the mental hospital. I guess Ken found out about it, and didn't bother explaining himself to Marge and David, who didn't find out this information until the audience does. This is not good storytelling. You have to explain why someone is doing something either before they do it, or while they are doing it. Not ten minutes later. So Marge and David drive off, leaving Ken to explore the place he is terrified of by himself. In their defense they did warn him that the serial killer is there, he just decided to stay anyway because his fear and terror wouldn't let him leave. Really Ken? Because that seems like the opposite of what those feelings should be doing. We then see that the masked maniac is watching them and looking around all suspiciously. In addition to looking for the character that we do not yet know needs to be looked for, Ken is also determined to catch the masked man. He does this by wandering through the dilapidated buildings. The Masked Maniac (as I will be calling him from now on) takes this opportunity to fuck with Ken. He locks him in a room with a couple spiders in it, from which Ken escapes in like ten seconds, leads him on wild goose chases through the saloon, and traps him in an easily escapable basement. Throughout this, Ken remains convinced that the Masked Maniac is actually Joey, despite the fact that he speaks in a much lower voice and, oh yeah, it is already well established that Joey lost his mind. Ken makes repeated attempts to talk to Joey/the Maniac who continues to taunt him and trap him in easily escapable situations. Finally the Maniac catches up to Ken and chokes him into unconsciousness. Meanwhile Marge and David are driving away and Marge recounts how her father was murdered and her mother died in a car accident and it kind of seems like there is someone slowly picking off everyone she loves. She even points out that next on the list would be David and Ken. You know, Ken, the guy they just left in a ghost town that is the confirmed location of the murderer. So they stop at a restaurant or something and while David calls the sheriff Marge chats with another couple and finds out that Joey has escaped from the mental hospital. So, Marge and David decide to go back to Ghost Town to look for him. Because if I got buried alive in concrete the first place I would go is the place it happened. Back at Ghost Town, Ken wakes up in the rain to the maniacal laughter of the Masked Maniac. Despite this, he remains convinced that it is Joey and calls out to him. The Maniac then tells him some stuff that I don't remember but he says it in a really deep, hypnotist like voice. Ken is trapped in a basement and the hooded maniac is blocking the trap door out. Then for some reason, the hooded maniac just wanders off and lets him out. Luckily for him, Ken trips over absolutely nothing only minutes later, giving the Maniac the chance to knock him out and tie him to a chair. Ken easily escapes from the chair, proving once again that the Maniac is just terrible at trapping people in things. Ken breaks a window and escapes from the room, while the Maniac watched him through a hole in the wall. This whole thing seems like a considerably lamer version of Saw. Then there is some maniacal laughter, the Maniac calls out Ken's name in a creepy manner and then he chases Ken into the wilderness or something, leading up to the lamest fight scene I have ever seen. It makes that scene of Captain Kirk fighting that lizard guy seem like the Matrix. At some point, a piece of wood teleports into Ken's hands. The whole scene doesn't really feel like the desperate struggle it is probably supposed to be, it just seems rather silly. Finally the Maniac pulls out the gun that he has apparently had the entire time and starts shooting. Ken locks himself in a jail for protection, but then he sees a noose out one of the windows. The Maniac taunts him and tells him to hang himself, which causes Ken to freak the fuck out. The Maniac then goes on to recount the story of a boy named Charlie that he hanged or something. Ken buggers off and the Maniac cuts down the noose, presumably to use later (spoiler alert: he never takes it out again). Meanwhile Marge and David begin searching for Joey, hoping to find him before the police do. While this is going on Ken has made his way into Crazy Bill's house for some reason. While he searches around for... something, the maniac watches him through a rectangular hole in the wall. Then Ken climbs some random ladder he found and the Maniac runs into the middle of the street for some reason. At this point I was officially bored of Ken running from the Maniac. It's just like a big game of Hide-and-Go-Stare-Creepily-At. Finally the Maniac once again catches Ken and knocks him out. This time he takes the precaution of binding his hands and feet. He takes him to the cemetery and puts him in an open grave. Ken begins hallucinating the voices of his parents arguing about how Ken is a pussy. The Masked Maniac then reveals that his name is Terror! and proceeds to bury Ken alive, though he uses dirt this time. Meanwhile Marge and Ken arrive at Ghost Town and notice Ken's car is missing. They begin their search by shouting his name and then wandering into a random dilapidated church. They hear him scream and at first it seems as if they are going to do nothing. Eventually they decide to go out into the street to shout his name some more. They have no concept of stealth whatsoever. Across the street they see a flashlight pointing at a window, apparently being held by some someone having a seizure.They too suspect that Joey is the Masked Maniac. Yes because apparently he buried himself in concrete. They go into another building and the Masked Maniac walks through the room they are standing in. Apparently none of the characters saw each other because they act like nothing happened. They then see him enter a saloon or something across the street and decide that this is merely a distraction. So they logically decide to go to the place that is furthest from the saloon, the cemetery. This is the most contrived way of advancing the plot I have ever seen. I think the film makers just didn't feel like filming another hour of the Maniac fucking with people in old buildings. At the cemetery, they find Ken partially buried, and determine that he is dead. After all that they just fucking kill off his character. Well played, film makers, well played. As they leave, the maniac comes up behind them and knocks out David, and then chokes Marge into unconsciousness before carrying her off. At this point the sheriffs arrive and find David. They revive him with smelling salts and he calmly sits down in the police car, apparently not caring too much that Marge is missing. The sheriff explains that Joey has been caught and is not longer insane. The reason he escaped is that he remembered who the killer was and decided to go catch him himself. I can see why he and Ken were friends. He told the police that someone lured him to the cemetery by telling him that Marge was in danger and that is when the Maniac caught him. The sheriff, who also mentions that Wesley Blake, Marge's only friend who has not been killed/knocked out, is a ventriloquist, reveals that David's retarded theory from before is completely accurate. Apparently the entire time the Masked Maniac was... *gasp* Wesley Blake! The one who was at the restaurant while the Maniac was running people off the road. WHAT!?!? No. You can't do that. That is retarded. I hate you so much, Terrified! Anyways, so David just calmly chats about being unconscious until the sheriff reminds him that Marge is missing. David gets deputized and they determine that Blake is in the mine. Meanwhile Marge wakes up to see her old pal Wesley Blake, wearing the exact same suit as the Masked Maniac. Luckily for Blake, she is retarded and does not immediately put two and two together. She does get a bit creeped out when Blake starts cradling her in his arms like a baby, trying to kiss her, and muttering like a crazy person about how he is the only one she has left. He also says that he would never hurt her, because apparently strangling her into unconsciousness doesn't count. The police surround the mine while David wanders off somewhere. They order Blake to come out, then burst in, leap to the ground and start wildly firing. David, who somehow got above the underground chamber from outside leaps down into the room as well. The film ends at this point with Blake dead and Marge and David together. Interestingly, the only character who got his own title screen in the credits was Stephen Roberts as Wesley Blake, which was superimposed over a scene of his dead body right before the end. I give this movie a 3 out of 5 for entertainment, and a 0 out of 5 for technical skill.