"Are ya ready to play?"
It's also a pinball machine released in 1996 by Bally and designed by Dennis Nordman, which is as absolutely excellent as the above mentioned film sounds dreadful. It stars Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark and camp horror hostess and prototype (along with MST3K) for those YouTube channels that giggle at terribad films, and involves her, surrounded by spoopy things like bats, spiders, and an old style CRT television set, flipping channels to find something that will cause you to be scared stiff. This is achieved by completing the six Tales of Terror on the playfield, and then activating the Stiff-O-Meter. Yeah, the ruleset isn't a super deep one, but it makes up for that by being incredibly fun and frankly ribald. Yeah, family friendly this isn't.
Playfield layout is a standard two-flipper affair. The ball is plunged and goes up either with a soft plunge into the Spider Hole, or with a stronger plunge through a channel and towards a saucer. Middle top of the playfield is The Crate, a model packing crate with evil glowing LED eyes peeking out of it, and behind that is a run of rollover lanes spelling DEAD. To the right of that is a glowing blue set of bumpers. Middle left is a lane that leads to the rollovers, and adjacent to that a ramp called The Bony Beast which is like a skeletal snake. It is huge, and ribbed. No, seriously, that's how Elvira describes it if you chain shots to it. I told you it was ribald. The lane can be diverted to a ball lock underneath The Bony Beast. Middle right is a bat ramp, and the spider hole, a scoop and vertical up-kicker into the bat ramp. Both ramps are all wiggly and go to the opposite side inlane. One thing about the playfield is that there's almost no dead space. Every single shot will likely cause something to happen. Even the posts on the ramps have spring-loaded bash targets on them that cause a little model frog to scream and leap up on a pole if hit. Even the outlanes can give you things, like the Telepathetic Power Award or casting THE SPELL.
Okay. So. Those tales of terror. They are:
- Eyes of the Bony Beast. Ride The Bony Beast twice to light this. It also lights the lock which allows you to get...
- The Stiff in the Coffin. Lock three balls and activate multiball. Jackpots are 250,000 each and lit by chaining alternate ramp shots, and if you do it enough "that's just made me STIFF!". You can also get jackpots in...
- Terror from The Crate. Hit the crate to light the evil eyes on it. If you do it enough then the next shot on the crate will cause the ball to fall into it by unlocking the front flap. Two-ball multiball will then start during which you can get jackpots if you "GET IT IN THERE!" I told you it was ribald.
- Return of the Deadheads. Complete the rollover lanes at the top to light this and advance the bonus multiplier. Of necessity the ball will fall after a shot into the rollovers into a scoop and the DMD will show a pun about a certain type of head. These range from lame, such as Fish Head ("Better practice your scales!"), suggestive, like Pumpkin Head ("Trick or Treat? Why not both."), ribald, such as Shrunken Head ("He always wanted a little head!") and then just plain raunchy, like Good Head ("YESS!!! YEEEESSSS!!!!").
- The Monster's Lab. Light this by hitting the bumpers 25 times. IT'S ALIIIVE!
- Night of the Leapers. Hit the leaper targets 10 times to light this, which also starts a mode called Leaper Mania. During this, frogs bounce across the DMD and if you hit the Leaper targets a further 8 times within a time limit it lights an extra ball.
There's a few other items as well. For instance, you can get a sneaky lock by doing a very gentle shot into the left lane so it goes up the diverter even if the lock isn't lit. And, of course, if the spider hole is lit and you shoot it, a big ol' spider in the backglass spins around and you can stop it with either flipper button to gain a random award. Also there's Boogie Man which is one of those random awards and causes the little critters on the slingshots to bounce up and down and you can gain bonuses by hitting sinkholes against the clock. Interestingly, the random spider awards are exhaustible and if you land the spider on an award that's already gone, you get nothing.
So, once you've done the six tales of terror, you have to get the ball into the crate to fire up the Stiff-O-Meter. This is where you see how stiff you can get. To do this you have to alternate, within 30 seconds, 10 shots, which must be ramp, then crate, then ramp, then crate. The last shot is always into the crate. If you manage this, you get Scared Stiff, the lights go off then random sounds and animations play and all the mechanical parts of the machine fire randomly, before giving you "MONSTER MULTIBALL!" which is basically a combination of The Stiff in the Coffin and Terror from the Crate as above. You also get to put your name on a special high score table with the time and date at which you were scared stiff.
It's really a very fun game. There's always something going on and Elvira coming out with innuendos and such is part of it. "Watch this. I'll get him up." "This thing is huge! And ribbed!" Chaining ramp shots causes her then to give off increasingly orgiatic yesses and then a snarky, "wake me up when you've finished." Even the art is ribald. The extra ball light appears in a remote control which has a switch to turn Elvira on or off. Early prototype art reportedly had a pseudo MPAA box saying "Rated R - Real Raunchy and Ribbed for Your Pleasure" but management made them take that out.
I think of all the DMD era pinballs, Scared Stiff is one of my favourites. Granted, it doesn't have the super deep ruleset of Star Trek Next Generation or Stern's Lord of the Rings, or the lethal speed of No Fear, nor the baroque and almost hypnotic play of Theatre of Magic. They were going more for fun and humour with this, a bit like Red and Ted's Road Show although it's way more ribald than that one. It also, unlike Funhouse, isn't actually terrifying (I refuse to play Funhouse because the creepy calliope music and the uncanny valley head on the playfield makes me feel uneasy.) It's just all round the most fun you could have in 1996 with one finger on each hand.
Oo-er.
(IN24/15)