Bored Scared Stiff (1986) -
Weasello Rating:
{----} (Don't even waste your time reading this)
As this movie is incredibly incredibly horrible and isn't even really that entertaining, I decided to do an all-out plot description. Therefore, spoilers are contained in the "plot" section; if you don't wish to see them thar spoilers, just skip it!
Warning: Plethora of
bad strikethrough jokes used in this writeup to help ease the pain.
Body Count: 3 or 4 on-screen deaths (one of which is questionable), all of which are ultimately questionable. Plus two already dead people.
Porn Count: You've probably already guessed that this movie is pretty bad, and if you have, you are correct. You would also venture to assume, that since this movie is of such suckage, it would include a big pile of boobs or maybe some man-ass to make up for the suck-tastic-ness. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong in that assumption.
The best you get is some bare ankle, and maybe a single shot of cleavage.
One sentence plot summary: I'll quote a user-review on IMDB for this one. I can't seem to top it.
"Awful film about a family moving into a new house and falling prey to a rubber faced African voodoo monster that possesses a man and forces him to kill his family."
The Plot: Let's see if I can write out this whole thing without seizing up. If it suddenly ends without warning, it's because my brain has rejected my requests for more information, refusing to let my body run through this bizzarre form of suicide.
OK, so there's this Psychiatrist named
David Young. A few months after treating a patient of his,
Kate Christopher, he decides to get all romantically involved with her and she moves in with him. Kate brings her son with her,
Jason (who is, incidentally, the worst child actor I've ever seen in my entire life ever of all time worst ever
ever).
We are treated to some backstory of some sort, something about how two hundred years ago there was some slave trader living in the same house. This slave trader had an uncanny likeness to David, and guess what? His wife and son also have an uncanny resembelance to Kate and Jason.
Apparantly slave-trader-guy's wife felt sorry for some slaves and hid them in the attic of their house. The husband, an obviously huge rascist, immediately proceeded to the attic and blew away the hidden slaves as soon as he found out about them. Unfortunately for the husband, the slaves were doing their
African Rubber Mask Voodoo Dance, and he became cursed and started turning into a scary monster guy. Thankfully, before they died, the slaves gave the old wife a sacred amulet to protect her and her son from the rubbery
ultra realistic and scary monster thing.
Anyway, back in modern times, a diary is found and there are some corpses found in the attic of this new house. David gets the police to haul the bones away, and finds out that they were the bones of the old wife and son duo. It turns out (information via the diary) that the wife dropped the amulet when running away from the rubber-masked freak and it broke in half - so the monster thingy locked the pair away in a trunk to be suffocated and/or starve to death.
This is a nice little convenient back-story that makes sure the evil is still present
today.
As things start going haywire and a little creepy around the house, Kate starts getting very nervous and freaked out. Being the stellar Psychologist he is, David gets very annoyed and angry with Kate and her "visions." Remember now, Kate is David's ex-patient of questionable mental health; but this is not alluded to in the film.
Things start getting creepier and creepier, with pigeons flying around the house and big rubbery transparancy special effects whizzing around, and Kate's had enough. She tries to take Jason and leave the house, but David stands in their way - looking just like the evil monster thing from before! I guess his anger pushed him over to the
dark side or something. In any case, it looks like Kate goes trippin' out to some wacky land where doorways open into jungles and various rooms around the city (or adjoining sets in the studio, wherever).
In the end, Kate finds half of the amulet, and just before she gets strangled to death Jason finds the second half and they put it together. This turns the rubber faced voodoo thing that used to be David into a tron-like character and he disintegrates in a flash of special effects.
Oh yeah, and for that last paragraph, Kate and Jason time travelled back 200 years.
Now everything is back to normal, and Kate and Jason go running out of the house. David appears in the front door! Kate and Jason back up the stairwell to a big plate glass window overlooking a balcony in the backyard. Kate gets all freaked out, pulls a knife, and stabs the regular-looking-David in the stomach, who proceeds to fall through the plate glass window, stumble over the balcony into the backyard, then
MAGICALLY APPEAR DEAD 30 FEET AWAY FROM THE HOUSE IN THE FRONT YARD, in possibly one of the biggest and most annoying continuity errors I have ever seen! ARrrgH!
The movie ends with Kate in the mental ward, with Jason giving her some flowers. This leads one to wonder - was Kate insane this whole time? Did she ever really move in with David? Or did she kill David then go insane? With the incredibly inplausible and confusing plotline, either is just as likely, and speculation is pointless.
We are then treated to a cameo of a Psychologist who looks just like the two-hundred-year-old husband guy, minus the big rubber voodoo mask. Oooh no! Could there be a sequel or something?!
My Opinion: OK, yes, I admit I watched and noded some
pretty bad movies recently. I rented 5 cheezy horror films from the store, not knowing anything about them. I honestly did not know that three of those films shared an IMDB rating of 2.7 out of 10.
I think I'm being punished for
something.
Filmed in
Miami, Florida in the mid-eighties and definately dressed to match, the cast is composed entirely of horrible actors in
horrible accurately-modelled 80's costumes, jewelry, and hair.
The music is also very
horrible 80's, and oddly upbeat for a horror movie. The special effects are... Uh... Well, if it was the film maker's intent to inflict pain upon me as opposed to the victims in the film, it worked wonders. I was successfully writhing on the floor in agony. Let's see here. We had some nice transparency shots of some rubber voodoo mask with big teeth flying "out" of the screen, we had some rubber face masks that made "gross dead corpses" look like "
Smurfs getting high in bad lighting," we had some more rubber masks depicting some
African evil zombie thing that looked kind of like a cross between an
Alligator and
Howard Stern, and finally we had the technical wonder of a giant head-shaped lamp that flew down a hallway and almost hit someone. Oh, dang, I almost forgot the
entirely realistic climatic death scene which topples even the
Nightmare on Elm Street series from the title of "King of cheezy special effects death sequences." And then we had the ultra-high tech ColecoVision 3D special effects that come out of a computer screen!
WOO Ow!
Usually when there's a really bad horror movie on, it's fun to laugh at and poke fun. This movie was so incredibly slow (yet suprisingly short, not even an hour and a half) and was so devoid of plot and special effects that there was nothing to really poke fun at.
I think we should do a re-do of that big hippy thing. You know, when they burned all them records or something? It was before my time and I never got to have that kind of fun. I think we should do it again with this movie.
This movie is not to be watched by anyone. Ever.
I hope the director feels bad about wasting (at least) 83 minutes of my life, and he should be forced to write apology letters to anyone who watched this movie. Damn, I can't even
imagine paying to see this in theatres - I would have been
furious!
Interesting Notes: Boring?
The Cast:
Director: stupid-ass Richard Friedman
Writer: Richard Friedman and
Daniel F. Bacaner
Tagline: There's no place left to hide
from the boredom!
Running Time: 83 Minutes
of pure hell
Sources: The oh-so-wonderful IMDB, my head, the box.