Science Crazed

My review was written in January 1991 after watching the movie on IAE video cassette.

This bottom of the barrel video represents amateurism at its worst. Purported horror "comedy" is interminable and incompetent, as repped by several of the hero's lines at the end of the film missing because someone forgot to dub them.

Apparently Canadian made circa 1987 as "The Fiend" as probable working title, Ron Switzer's film concerns a monster (Tony Dellaventura) prowling the corridors of Shelley Institute, occasionally attacking not-so-pretty women. Switzer repeats the same shots with all the aplomb of a porno video director.

The sound is haphazard, editing pitiful and sets virtually nonexistent. Many scenes are shot abstractly with characters surrounded by darkness. Makeup effects for the bandaged fiend are poor, and lack of any imaginative gore is something of an insult for the completist fans who try to sit through this one.

About the only items to keep one awake are cryptic scenes such as a blonde reciting and writing down the names of countries at random until the monster kills her. As an amateur audition film it fails on all counts.

This is by far the worst movie ever made. I have no doubt. I have seen such crap as Manos, Space Mutiny, and whatnot, and I can honestly tell you that they do not hold a candle to Science Crazed.

Science Crazed has no discirnable plot. Something about a guy making a woman pregnant via turkey baster, and the child born *hours* later is fully grown, and ready to kill. Of course, being a newborn, it takes him about an hour to kill people. The director loops footage constantly, and takes about fifteen minutes to set up an awkward death. There is about a page of dialogue for the whole movie, however the dialogue arrives about a minute after it is spoken.

Sample Scene: The monster is walking down a hall. We know this because there is about ten minutes of looped footage of his feet. In between loops, we are treated to two women working out. Repeat ad nauseum for about 20 minutes. When the monster does show up, no one moves, and everyone looks like deer in headlights as the monster takes another 10 minutes to get to them to kill them. By the level of the acting, you would guess that the people are already dead.

I know my description doesn't seem too bad, but trust me, I can not fully describe the pain that is Science Crazed.

Stay away, and boycott all video stores that carry it. :)

This is horrific. No really, this is ,bar none, the absolute worst...worst...I hesitate to even call it a @&$%in' _movie_. It is a ninety minute visual root canal. The plot is practically non-existent: a mad scientist who looks like the frontman from 'The Cars' impregnates a woman in his secret lab, a lawn chair in what I think may be a garage, via an injection of Palmolive. Within hours she births a full grown monster who then goes on a rampage. Thats the whole movie. The death scenes: these are poorly set up, take _forever_, and the acting...how can you mess up _screaming_?? The victims stand there while the growling, wheezing, congested freak advances on them and proceeds to limply strangle them for about three days. The sets are cheesy, the lighting for most of the movie consists of a single maglite (yes, a big honkin' flashlight), the sound quality is poor, theres only about 40 words of dialogue for the entire movie and the acting is generously described as wooden. Footage is shamelessly recycled to pad out the movie. And the special effects would make any BBC sci-fi production shake their head and proclaim "They didn't even try". The 'monster' is some nameless in a $3 halloween rubber mask with a few bandages slapped on. In its encounter with the lone cop of the movie the cop fires flashless, smokeless, invisible bullets that apparently travel so slow the monster can dodge them at five paces. Don't see this movie. No really, thats not a dare. Don't see this movie. The director should be shot. The writer should be chained to a giant rock where his liver will be devoured every morning by Ed Wood. Enough rentals and there could be a sequel, don't let it happen!

I've (and enjoyed, for their badness) bad movies before, but this beats all. I mean, I knew it was bad going in, but nothing could have prepared me, I assumed others were exaggerating. There is literally probably only about 15 minutes of film in here, if you took out all the repeated shots, and you tightened the edits like a normal person on a normal film would have done.

Things that made no sense: women in heels and/or earrings at the swanky indoor pool inside the Institute. The statement that "we should wait here for 15 minutes, and then search again, it's our only choice." Why calling the police leads to a video store. It's only a movie in the sense that a mud pie is a pie, it's that far off the mark.

And I may be being generous. The overwhelming majority of the movie consists of looped footage...the shambling monster, two women exercising, the shambling monster again, a bunch of people in the pool, the shambling monster again, none the worse for wear despite having been injured...you get the picture. I restrained myself from yelling "GET ON WITH IT ALREADY" on several occasions.

And it doesn't help that the footage they used was poorly produced. The sound is disconcertingly out of sync with the image. And in the one scene where they tried to get "artistic" with the lighting and camera techniques, the lighting guy, holding the flashlight that provides the scene's only illumination, is clearly visible in the shot.

My hope is that the production was the victim of some horrible disaster in which the original audio track and most of the footage was destroyed, but they decided to release it anyways, cobbled together from the editing room floor, in memory of the heroic crew members who gave their lives trying to save the *real* film - the one with the plot and the interesting dialog. Sadly, there's no evidence of this, and I'm forced to conclude that, in the immortal words of Joel and the Bots, they just didn't care.