The Norton Cyberdyne Corporation deals with military defense technology. The CEO of the company is Carter Brown (David Gale). Their latest creations are two new products. One is a gun called the Deathrattle. The gun can launch over a thousand rounds, in the form of energy, a second and is easy to use. The other is a DNA and mechanically engineered super soldier expressly created to withstand dry arid climates. The creature lives on spinal fluid and is used for hand-to-hand combat. The creature can also reproduce asexually. They produce a pod structure where the soldier, called a Syngenor, or SYNthesized GENetic ORganism, develops until mature. A new Syngenor can be reproduced every twenty-four hours.
Stan Armbrewster (Charles Lucia) works for Cyberdyne. His associate is Paula Gorski (Riva Spier). Paula has designs on running the company. To do that, she needs to sabotage the company and blame it on Brown. She has Stan take the company’s Public Relations head, Tim Calhoun (Jon Korkes), and a couple hookers, Candy (Julia Kruis) and Brandy (Heaven Steller), into the basement where the Syngenor is kept. Stan releases the monster and runs away. The Syngenor kills Tim, Candy and Brandy. It then gets out of the facility.
The creator of the Syngenor is Ethan Valentine (Lewis Arquette). Ethan left the company and now continues inventing things out of his home workshop. The Syngenor makes its way to Ethan’s house and kills him. When his niece, Susan (Starr Andreeff), comes home she finds her uncle dying. He tries to give her a message before he dies but she is attacked by the Syngenor. She manages to set it on fire and escape.
Nick Cary (Mitchell Laurence) is a reporter working on a story on Carter Brown and Norton Cyberdyne. Nick gets the runaround but does learn about the murders in the basement and also learns about Ethan leaving the company. Nick tries to visit Ethan but finds that he too is dead. Things heat up as Ethan and Susan team up to find out what is actually going on at Cyberdyne. This puts them in the crosshairs of not only Paula and Stan, but Carter as well. Carter, who by now is basically insane, begins to see enemies everywhere and starts lashing out by releasing more Syngenors.
AKA “Scared To Death 2” was released in 1990 and was directed by George Elanjian Jr. It is an American science fiction horror film. The movie is sort of a sequel to the 1980 film “Scared to Death”. The film was produced by Jack Murphy. He liked the original monster in the 1980 film but because it didn’t do well at the box office he decided to create an entirely different story so, other than the basic monster design and the fact that it sucks up spinal fluid, the two films have nothing in common.
The best part of the movie is the over-the-top acting from David Gale. If you thought he was whacky as Dr. Carl Hill in “Re-Animator” 1985, wait till you see him here. The movie was already ripe for camp but with Gale in the mix, it turned out to be quite crazy. The second-best part of the film is the monster costume. Neither this film nor the original 1980 film is that great, but they both have a certain, but different, cringe factor that makes them both fascinating to watch.