TOO SCARED TO SCREAM

 1982/18/95m

A.k.a. The Doorman

Director: Tony Lo Bianco / Writers: Neil Barbera & Glenn Leopold / Cast: Mike Connors, Anne Archer, Ian McShane, Leon Issac Kennedy, Maureen O’Sullivan, Chet Doherty, Sully Boyar, Karen Rushmore, Victoria Bass, Murray Hamilton, John Heard.

Body Count: 8

Shot in ’82 but unreleased until ’85, this well made but largely void of meaning TV-movie slasher is about a series of bloody murders committed in a Manhattan tower block for well-to-do New Yorkers. And was written by one-half of Hanna Barbera (!)

Is toffy Shakespeare-droning English doorman McShane responsible? Or is it his mute, disabled mom?

Conners and Archer play a pair of cops trying to solve the case, the latter eventually going under cover and, naturally, getting attacked by the knife-toting loon in what is probably the film’s standout scene.

Things all go a bit Psycho towards the end with the emergence of the killer’s identity, with a motive so dumb it’s not even substantial enough to warrant crank phone calls, let alone murdering a bunch of folk you don’t even know!

And that’s about all there is to it story wise.

While it plays with Murder, She Wrote-esque mid-80s-ness, Too Scared to Scream is a surprisingly bloody affair with a surprising number of familiar faces peppered throughout. One for completists.