Reviewed by Geno McGahee
A young man, John Devers (Joe Spano), roams a college campus with Groucho Marx glasses on and in a trench coat. He approaches a college girl, Jenny Macallister (Laurie Walters), and begins to use different accents to impress her and remarkably, it works. The fake accents and bad impressions are enough to convince Jenny to go on a picnic with John, but not before Jenny can go to her deviancy class. Well, I guess it is some sort of deviancy class, where the professor talks of homosexuality and incest being deviant behavior. The next day’s lesson is: cannibalism. It was a very interesting class and it plays more of a part in this movie then most realize, in my opinion.
The happy couple have their picnic, but unfortunately get lost on the way back, ending up at an abandoned spa. They decide to explore the enormous building and to their surprise, they meet Agnes Abercrombi (Edna Macafee), a seemingly nice old lady that resides there. She has them over for tea, shows them around the old spa, and gives them a really dirty look when they leave. She obviously is not a nice old lady.
John, claiming to be a newspaper reporter, wants to do a story on the spa, considering the supposed history where some cannibalistic activity occurred during a wedding ceremony. He insists that Jenny accompanies him, and she does, and that is when things get really weird. She notices that Agnes is trying to dope her, but can’t seem to convince her hubby that it’s true. Amazingly, the duo elects to spend the night at the spa, after Jenny is nearly killed by two hillbillies, one wielding an axe. If being drugged and being chased by two homicidal hillbillies don’t scare you off, nothing will.
One of the coolest scenes of the film is when Jenny elects to explore the spa solo. There is a locked walk in freezer that Agnes had claimed was permanently sealed, but Jenny gets it open and finds several chopped up corpses, and then, strangely, a ghost in a wedding dress mocks her and laughs maniacally. Now the jig is up and Jenny is going to leave, but the family of cannibals is exposed and their evil satanic plan is coming together. Jenny now has to run for her life.
In the end, Jenny is apprehended by the police, and found in the possession of drugs, that she claims are not hers. During her fight to leave the spa, she took out some of the family members, but the corpses that should be there are missing in action. The police conclude that Jenny is just high on drugs and her story was nonsense. The very end of this film proves that their theory is correct, in my opinion, and when you figure in the little hints throughout the film, that has to be the explanation for the outrageous situation.
This is a great movie, and remarkably, Tobe Hooper, who was making “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” at the same time that this movie was being filmed, was very nervous, because they are similar, although different enough to stand alone and not be associated with each other. This is a fantastic movie that anyone that enjoyed movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Unhinged, and Midnight, House of 1000 Corpses, will love this one.
Scared Stiff Rating: 9/10. An interesting cannibal/satanic cult film with a trick ending.
