Scared to Death (1980) on Netflix
A killer the Los Angeles police cannot trace strikes with brutal feats of strength. Former detective Ted Lonergan, now a novelist, refuses his old partner's pleas to look at the case.
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- Netflix2.2/5
- IMDb4.3/101,445 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Murders go unsolved in Los Angeles, and the news media ridicules the police department over its failure to catch the killer. Investigators have no eyewitnesses and no fingerprints, and they link the cases only by the killer's strength, such as tearing the door off a car. Ted Lonergan, a former detective who now writes novels, is pressed by his old partner, Detective Lou Capell, to look at the file, and he declines. He is busy courting Jennifer Stanton, whom he met when he backed into her car. She dislikes his rude and eccentric personality at first, but his persistence wins her over.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Scared to Death (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Malone originally cast the actor and pop star Rick Springfield as the lead, but Springfield called the night before filming began to say he could not do it because he would miss too many acting classes. Malone then begged John Stinson, whom he remembered from an improvisation class, to take the part.
- To raise the money for the film, Malone mortgaged his house and sold most of his personal belongings, including his car, and with what he raised he began building and sculpting the monster suit himself.
- Lone Star Pictures, a Texas-based company, put $40,000 toward the budget and took worldwide distribution; its first sale, to Malaysia, was for $90,000, putting the $74,000 film into profit.
- Malone had previously worked as a designer at a Halloween mask factory so that he could design the monster himself, and after raising the money he took three months to build the suit, inspired by H.R. Giger's design from Alien.
