Chiller (1985)

As has been noted many times by numerous people, Wes Craven's contributions to the horror genre, particularly from the 70's to the 90's, can't be underestimated. But, while most laymen likely know of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream or, at the very least, the iconography of Freddy Krueger and Ghostface, Craven's work in television in the 70's and 80's is mostly known to just diehard fans. That's not to say it's an obscure footnote of his career that should be forgotten. While I can't comment on his episodes of the 80's Twilight Zone, as I've never watched a single episode of it (or any version besides the classic original), or Night Visions, which he made in 1990, Summer of Fear, aka Stranger in Our House, with Linda Blair, is quite an enjoyable little flick, as is Invitation to Hell, even if it does get more than a little silly. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for today's item. Like Craven's other TV work, I didn't learn of Chiller until I dug real deep when looking up his filmography, as even among its brethren, it's very obscure, with films like Deadly Blessing and The Hills Have Eyes Part II having more behind-the-scenes information available, be it from Craven himself or scholars and historians. All I knew when I first went into it was what I'd heard from that horror podcast I've mentioned before, which was little more than it was a very dull film; I had no idea what the story was, who starred in it, or what have you. Still, when I happened across an old DVD release from the early 2000's at McKay's one day, I decided to take a chance, as it was very cheap. When I watched it, what first struck me was how awful the picture and sound quality were on this disc. There were some scenes where the sound was horribly muffled and, more than just a VHS rip, it looked and felt like it was a DVD-R of an actual TV airing from years before that someone managed to trick McKay's into taking. And this poor condition persists in general even today, as the film hasn't been released on any other formats. There are actually VHS rips that you can find on YouTube and other sources that, while not great, are better than that DVD. (One of those rips is what I'm going to use for screenshots, as that really crappy DVD version is what you get officially on Tubi, at least as of right now. That's an overlong way for me to apologize for the lackluster quality of the images up ahead.)

As for the movie itself, Chiller has a similar problem to The Hills Have Eyes Part II, released the same year, in that it's 90 or so minutes of basically nothing. I wouldn't say it's as much of a frustrating failure, as watching it isn't an endurance like with that or something like My Soul To Take (I still contend that that is the worst thing Craven ever made), but it does so little with its fairly interesting main concept, likely due to the limitations of a TV-movie from the 80's, that it makes you wonder why Craven and company even bothered. It does have some capable actors in its cast, some of whom manage to give pretty good performances; there is, as you'd expect with Craven, something under the surface that he's trying to get at; and there are, surprisingly, some instances of well-done makeup effects, but, at the end of the day, the film comes off as cold and lifeless as its villain, and not in a good way.

Shortly after the shift change one night at a cryonics lab, the security guard on duty discovers that one of the storage tubes is leaking fluid. Inspecting it, he finds that it's malfunctioned but the alarm failed to go off, and the body inside is thawing. Said body is that of Miles Creighton, the young heir to a powerful corporation who has been kept in stasis for the past ten years after he contracted an, at the time, inoperable liver condition. He's rushed to the hospital where his mother, Marion, who insisted that he be frozen in the first place, consents for the surgeons to perform the operation. It proves successful and, while it takes a number of tries with a defibrillator, Miles is revived. He remains comatose for six weeks, and though the administrators consider taking him off life-support, his mother, desperate to have him back, insists that they keep him in stasis for a while longer. One night, while massaging Miles' body, a nurse witnesses him go through a disturbing physical transformation and regain consciousness, albeit with an initial strange look to his eyes. Upon his being returned home, everyone is surprised when his dog, Happy, acts hostile towards him. That night, the dog manages to get in the house and makes his way up to Miles' room to attack him, only for Miles to kill him and put his body in the gardener's shed. This is the first of many uncharacteristically cruel acts that Miles commits, including ending all of his company's charity donations to increase its profitability and firing Clarence Beeson, the very man who kept the company on its feet for the past ten years. He goes even farther and kills Beeson by causing him to have a heart attack, as well as makes Leigh Kenyon, the head of PR, into his abused personal slave, and often has his sinister eye on Stacey, his step-sister. When he goes to the office to sort out what happened with the donations, Felix Penny, the family reverend, learns of both Kenyon's abuse and how everyone there is terrified of Miles. He tries to warn Marion but she refuses to listen, and he starts to suspect that, while Miles' body may have been revived, his soul wasn't, leading him to become a heartless and dangerous monster.

Chiller first aired just six months after A Nightmare on Elm Street was released, and you'd think this would've been a great time for Wes Craven, given how enormously successful the latter was. But, because of the deal he had to make to get it made, he didn't make much of any money off of it, and he was also smarting from how Bob Shaye then took it and made it into a franchise, whether Craven himself liked it or not, and which didn't require his participation. And on top of that, Nightmare only further cemented Craven's reputation as a horror filmmaker, which he was desperately trying to break out of at the time. In doing so, he had a number of potential projects on his plate at the time, including an all-female version of Lord of the Flies, a modern version of Frankenstein, scripts called Haunted and Working Class Bride, and even Flowers in the Attic, all of which either didn't get made or, in the case of the latter, were ultimately done without his involvement. This was also around the time when the 80's Twilight Zone revival began, and one of the five episodes Craven directed for the show was written by J.D. Feigelson, who also wrote Chiller. Save for The Hills Have Eyes Part II, which was shot before Nightmare and released basically unfinished, Craven wouldn't return to the silver screen until the following year, and it would still take him a while to finally earn respect and prestige.

Right off the bat, a big problem with Chiller is that the villain, Miles Creighton (Michael Beck), who's also the ostensible protagonist, is not that compelling. While the idea of somebody being brought back to life without their soul is an interesting one, and the film does, at one point, discuss what this could mean for the faithful at large, in the case of Miles, it makes him into little more than a one-note, tyrannical, and homocidal corporate executive. When he returns to his father's company following his revival, he proves to be cruel and ruthless, describing their profit margins as pitiful and sneering at the idea of charity donations and contributions. Telling everyone during a staff meeting that, "The marketplace is cold-blooded... It doesn't care... Charity does not increase sales. It's nonprofit," he strips the company of anything that he feels doesn't contribute to the company's profitability or "efficiency," as well as anything that he finds, "Obsolete or useless to me." To that end, he fires Clarence Beeson, his father's old friend who kept the company going for the ten years that Miles was in stasis. This isn't surprising, given how, during an interaction between them shortly after he came home, Miles was completely dismissive of him and what he'd done for both the company and his family. And when Beeson tries to confront him about it, Miles provokes a fatal heart attack in him by leading him up numerous flights of stairs, as he desperately tries to talk with him. Beeson isn't Miles' first victim, as previously his old dog, Happy, who was hostile towards him when he was first brought home, got into the house in an attempt to attack him, only for Miles to kill the dog himself. Happy and Beeson are far from the last, as well, as Miles offers Leigh Kenyon, the company's head of advertising and PR, a job "outside the office," one where she'll answer only to him. Though disgusted by this, she ultimately swallows her pride and goes up to his hotel room to "discuss" it with him, only to end up battered and bruised from his rough idea of pleasure. And if that weren't enough, Miles also has his evil eye set on his teenage step-sister, Stacey.

Another major problem with Miles' character is that, because the movie begins with his already having been frozen for ten years and his subsequent revival, we have no firsthand knowledge of what he was like before. All we know is what we hear from others and see in some old photographs, and it doesn't amount to much other than this assumption that he was a good guy. Thus, the horrific change that's taken place within has no emotional impact on the viewer. And as I've said, while this concept is interesting and plays

into a commentary that Craven was making about "soulless" executives and businessmen of the time, both Miles' portrayal and Michael Bell's actual performance are so one-note that it's mostly wasted. The only truly interesting moment with Miles comes near the end, when he has a confrontation with Reverend Penny. Sensing that this whole scenario has caused major damage to Penny's faith, Miles tells him, "You want to know what's on the other side... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You die and there's

simply darkness... No streets of gold. No harps, no halos, no angels and saints. It's all here, so you better live it up, holy man. Make the most of the here and now, because that's all there is." Whether he's telling the truth or just cruelly taunting Penny is never revealed, but it makes for one of the few bits of insight into this whole concept. After that, Miles tells Penny to stop interfering in his affairs and stay away from his family. However, Penny only chases after him to insist that his faith is the truth, and Miles takes the opportunity to seriously injure him with his car.

Afterward, Miles goes back to his house and tries to seduce Stacey, only for Marion to intervene. Having seen Penny at the hospital, and now realizing that this man isn't the son she knew, she threatens to call the police, but it doesn't deter him at all. He grabs a gaffing hook and chases after Marion, only for her to lock him up in a walk-in freezer down in the basement (he's shown to have a major aversion to cold since he was brought back, but it may as well

have been removed from the movie, as it goes nowhere and his being trapped in the freezer doesn't stop him at all). In the end, he's shot twice by Marion, and while he still tries to attack and kill her, he has a possible last minute change of heart and lets her go before expiring.

Something else about Miles that's left ambiguous is what exactly he is after being resurrected. While Penny assumes that it's his mind and body, only brought back without his soul, for all we know, it could actually be an evil spirit or demon that, during the time it took to actually resuscitate Miles after the surgery, slipped in, possessed his body (the scene where the nurse watches as something strange happens with Miles' comatose body could've been the actual moment of possession), and is now taking full

advantage of the situation. Part of the confrontation between Miles and Penny, where the latter asks who he is and he answers, "Ask Marion. Who should know her son better than his own mother?", possibly suggests this or something similar, not to mention how much pleasure Miles seems to get in attacking the reverend's faith. But, like so much else, nothing is made of this, and while it allows you to draw your own conclusions, it also feels like they couldn't do much with it because they were so constrained.

While Marion Creighton (Beatrice Straight) definitely qualifies as an overly-attached mother, it's less of an unhealthy obsession with Miles himself than her having no one else in her life, given that she lost her husband. When she realized she was going to lose Miles as well when he first became ill, she was so devastated and desperate that she opted to have him cryonically frozen until the operation necessary to save him became possible. Knowing that most would likely question and even object to this course of action, she went as far as to have it covered up, holding a fake funeral and burial for him. And when he begins to unexpectedly thaw out at the beginning of the film, Marion is convinced that a miracle is about to take place and calls Reverend Penny to the hospital so he can witness it. Even when the surgeon, Dr. Collier, warns her that they're going into uncharted territory, Marion remains confident, saying, "God wouldn't have brought us this far to let us down." As the surgery is being performed, she spends the time in the hospital chapel with Penny, trying to stay positive. Though elated when she learns the surgery was successful and Miles has been revived, when six weeks pass without him waking up, Marion is faced with the possibility of him being taken off life support. So desperate is she to have her son back that she insists he be kept hooked up for a while longer, "Even if it's like this." She gets her wish and Miles does eventually awaken, leaving her positively ecstatic. Not surprisingly, she's then unwilling to accept that there's something wrong, despite warning signs like Miles' odd behavior and the way the dog reacts when they bring him home. She's also sure that Miles' firing Clarence Beeson was a misunderstanding, and when Miles admits he did it, she makes him promise to rehire Beeson, unaware that Beeson is dead from a heart attack that Miles caused. Even when Penny, after learning of Miles' getting rid of the charity donations, abusing Leigh Kenyon, and terrorizing everyone at the office, tries to warn her, Marion refuses to believe it. She goes as far as to think Penny is doing this over the donations, and becomes distraught when he insists there's something wrong with Miles, going as far as to insinuate that her step-daughter is less important to her than her actual son.

It's only when Miles nearly kills Penny and Marion rushes to his bedside at the hospital that she begins to learn the truth, as Penny tells her that Miles was revived without his soul. Returning home, she gets there in time to see Miles coming on to Stacey, which she manages to stop. Sending Stacey up to her room, Marion confronts Miles and tells him that she now knows the truth, as well as that he failed to kill Penny and he told her what happened. She also threatens to call the police on him, leading him to chase her

downstairs with a gaffing hook, but she tricks him into the walk-in freezer and locks him in. She calls the police, then goes back upstairs and comforts Stacey, apologizing to her for what happened, as well as out of guilt over prioritizing Miles over her, saying she was trying to live in the past. In the end, though the police arrive and enter the freezer, Marion is forced to put Miles down herself when, despite being frozen, he attacks and threatens to kill one of the officers. Grabbing the man's dropped revolver, she shoots Miles twice in the chest, seemingly killing him

and causing her to break down crying in anguish. Miles, naturally, resurrects for one last attack, but expires before he can kill her. The movie ends with Marion looking after Penny at the hospital, saying she'll do absolutely anything possible to help him.

The presence of Paul Sorvino in this film is often used as a selling point whenever you find it on home video, although he's actually not in it that much. As Felix Penny, the Creighton family reverend, he's shocked when he arrives at the hospital after being called by Marion and learns that Miles was put in cryonic stasis rather than buried, as he and everyone else thought. Though Marion keeps on insisting that a miraculous resurrection is about to take place, Penny is concerned about what may possibly happen, given how unprecedented this. He's good enough to stay with Marion in the hospital chapel during the operation, but while he assures her that this is the "Age of Miracles," he adds, "It's just that it's a different kind of miracle than I am trained to understand." After that, he disappears from the movie for a while, until he goes to the office to find out why the company has stopped donating to the church. There, he not only learns that, under Miles' orders, they've stopped giving donations period, but also sees the bruises on Leigh Kenyon's face. Though she doesn't come out and say it, Penny is sure they're also Miles' doing and talks with Marion, only for his warnings to fall on deaf ears. He himself is also so rattled by this whole thing that he begins to question his beliefs and wonders what it is that happens to the soul after death, suspecting that Miles' soul wasn't resurrected along with his body and mind, making him into a cold, emotionless monster. His faith is especially tested when he comes upon Miles while he's out walking one night. He asks Miles who he is but he, instead, Miles opts to tell Penny what's on the other side, saying it's nothing but darkness, rather than the paradise that Christianity says is there. Penny is stricken by this and accuses Miles of lying. Also, despite being told to stay out of his affairs and away from his home and family, he chases after Miles to his car and tells him, "You're a liar. What I believe is true, and will always be true!" This nearly gets him killed, as Miles shuts his car's door, snagging Penny's scarf in it, and proceeds to drag Penny down the street until his scarf comes loose, then turns around and drives right at him. Amazingly, Penny isn't killed by this, though he does wind up in the hospital with serious injuries. Whether or not he lives is left unresolved, but before he loses consciousness, he's able to tell Marion what's happened to Miles.

Few of the other characters bring much to the story. Miles' step-sister, Stacey (Jill Schoelen), is one of the first to suspect that there's something going on with him, as she finds an old photo of Miles and Happy ripped up after the dog is suddenly killed, which really upsets her, and also overhears Marion talking with Clarence Beeson about Miles firing him. But, in the end, her role amounts to little more than Miles spying on her and eventually coming on to her near the end. Speaking of Beeson (Dick O'Neill), he comes

off as a nice, gregarious older man who, when Miles is revived, is more than willing to allow him to return to the company as its head, saying that it's what his father, who was a close friend, would've wanted. But what he doesn't expect is for Miles to be so dismissive of what he's done for both the company and his family for the ten years he was on ice, and to unceremoniously fire him when he takes back control. Beeson is so shocked by this that, after telling Marion what happened, he gets more than a little drunk and

tries to plead his case to Miles. He desperately follows him up flights of stairs, begging Miles to let him stay until the end of the year, so he can retire and leave with some dignity. But by the time Miles has had him climb up to the building's top floor, Beeson is on the verge of a heart attack, and Miles pushes him over the edge by asking, "Now where's your dignity?", and adding, "I don't need you anymore." Beeson tries to take his medication but collapses in the corner and dies, with Miles leaving his body there to be discovered. Though advertising and PR head

Leigh Kenyon (Laura Johnson) locks horns with Miles about his termination of the company's charity donations when she meets him during his first staff meeting, she can't help but find her interest piqued when he offers her an unnamed, well-paying position that would involve her answering to no one but him personally. Though disgusted when he suggests they "discuss" this potential job in the privacy of his hotel room, Miles' confidence that she's not as proud as she appears proves to be true, as she later appears at his door. But then, she learns that his idea of pleasure is much more painful and sadistic than she imagined. When Reverend Penny comes to the office and sees the bruises on her face, Kenyon tells him that she's leaving the company, and also fearfully asks him not to tell the police on her behalf, warning him, "You don't know what he is." And finally, while she's only in two scenes, Penny's elder secretary (Wendy Goldman) is good enough to listen to him when he pontificates what might've happened to Miles following his death.

Mimi Meyer-Craven, Wes' wife at the time, who appeared in small roles in several of his early movies (including as a nurse in A Nightmare on Elm Street), appears here in one scene as Nurse Cooper, who massages Miles' body when he's comatose after being revived, and witnesses an unsettling physical transformation within him before he regains consciousness. As expected, she's the only one who sees this, including an unsettling look to Miles' eyes when they first open. This would be one of the last

times she would work with her husband before they got divorced. Another familiar face from Nightmare, Joseph Whipp, who appeared there during the third act as Sgt. Parker, appears here briefly as an unnamed detective who investigates what happened to Reverend Penny. Both he and Mimi Meyer-Craven would work with Wes again afterward, appearing in one of his Twilight Zone episodes, and Whipp would appear again in Scream eleven years later.

Likely because it was a TV movie shot on a low budget and short schedule, Chiller is one of Craven's most uninspired films from a visual and filmmaking standpoint. Ignoring how there's still not a really good print available, the movie's cinematography isn't all that compelling, save for some scattered moments like a long POV shot during the opening at the cryonics lab (it leads to a fake jump-scare), a Vertigo-esque shot looking both up and down the winding stairwells during Clarence Beeson's fatal confrontation with Miles, and some obviously

Psycho-inspired shots when it's revealed that Miles is spying on Stacey while she's changing her clothes in her room through a hole in the closet wall, a notion that's reinforced by another POV shot as he watches her in the swimming pool through one of the house's upstairs windows. I also like how, during the scene where Reverend Penny talks with his secretary about what becomes of the soul after death, it's done through a fairly long tracking shot as they walk through the church. And while I doubt anyone would

call the movie truly scary, there are a couple of instances of decent enough atmosphere, namely the opening in the cryo-lab, with all of those stasis tubes and the cold mist covering the floor, and when Penny is walking by himself late at night (while it's a full moon, no less), before he runs into Miles. Speaking of the cryonics lab, it's definitely the most memorable setting in the movie, even if that storage facility is all we ever see of it. Everything else is completely and totally ordinary, from the hospital where Miles is

revived to his family's big, elegant mansion, and from the interiors of his office building and the hotel where he meets up with Leigh Kenyon, to Penny's church. The production design and art direction are definitely not low-rent, but there's nothing that special about most of the film's settings, either.

You wouldn't think it but, while there's definitely none of the graphic violence and deaths you associate with Craven (the only real instance of blood is a brief one during the surgery scene), there are some impressive makeup effects here, courtesy of Stan Winston. The most impressive is when Miles actually resurrects while Nurse Cooper is massaging his body, which starts off subtly, with some slight spasms in his face, as well as his hand reflexively grabbing hers, but then transitions into both his arms and the veins underneath the flesh pulsating, with the same

happening to his face. It's impossible to tell if these shots were done with a dummy or if they put bladder effects on Michael Bell's face and arms (it could be a combination of the two), but it looks quite good, as well as unsettling. Also, the makeup for how Miles looks when he's frozen, both at the beginning and when he's trapped in the freezer during the climax, is simple, with the really pale skin, but effective, and will make your skin crawl if you hate the idea of being that cold. The same also goes for the creepy yellow-brown eyes he initially has when he's resurrected, as well as during that last sequence.

Aside from our lackluster villain protagonist and ho-hum direction and production design, there are two other major reasons why Chiller isn't that great of a flick. One, as I've already alluded to, while it has some interesting ideas, as well as some noteworthy commentary that Craven is trying to make with it, in the end, it doesn't amount to much. Even though, in his book on Craven's life and career, Wes Craven: The Man and His Nightmares, author John Wooley describes Chiller as, "A meditation on the relationship between body and soul," it's only truly explored in

one section of the film, when Reverend Penny ponders what happens to the soul after death. As he talks with his secretary, he notes how the existence of an afterlife has never been definitively proven, and then expounds, "Once we had faith that the entire universe revolved around the Earth, but science changed that... We believe that man is made up of body, mind, and spirit. Now, the body is physical. You can see it, you can touch it. But the spirit... We believed that, when someone dies, the soul goes off to

paradise, to heaven, to some hereafter. Now, suppose that a man died. I mean, really died. Not one of those near-death experiences. And suppose that, in fact, he was buried for ten years, and after that time, somehow, he was reanimated, brought back to life. If the body and the mind functioned, then he would technically be alive. But what about the soul? Would the soul be required to rejoin the body? Or would it remain on the other side?" Interesting thing to ponder, but all we get of it is this scene and his confrontation with Miles immediately afterward.

As Penny alludes to during his monologue, the film also touches on the modern day clash between faith and science, with the idea that people will eventually be able to be brought back to life, thus removing the need for an afterlife if there is one (one of the first things you see when the film begins is a plaque on the cryonics lab's exterior that reads, "THEY SHALL SEE TOMORROW,"). This is something that Penny himself is unable to wrap his mind around when he's at the hospital at the beginning, saying it's a kind of miracle that he's not used to. And then, there's the

issue of the crisis of faith that it, as well as what Miles has become, causes him to have, which Miles himself compounds by telling him that there's no afterlife whatsoever. Unlike Craven's previous TV-movie, Invitation to Hell, Chiller opts to leave this question unanswered, as you, again, never learn whether or not Miles is telling the truth. And though it ends with Marion being advised to pray for Penny's recovery, as the doctors have done all they can for him, whether or not it will make a difference is also

left unresolved. Like I said when I talked about what exactly Miles might be, while it is nice that the film leaves it up to the viewer to work out for themself, it also feels like it may possibly be less of an artistic choice on the part of both Craven and screenwriter J.D. Feigelson, and more of a compromise they had to make due to the inherent nature of what they were working on.

If there's a major similarity between Chiller and Invitation to Hell, it's that, as John Carpenter would later do with aliens, both feature Craven using the idea of the soulless as a means of taking a bite out of 1980's corporate America, with the resurrected Miles embodying how cold, ruthless, scummy, untrustworthy, and downright evil the heads of major corporations and companies can be. However, as Wooley notes, whereas in Invitation to Hell, people lose their souls through the work of the devil himself, the process of it here, as we've discussed, isn't nearly

that black-and-white or simple to reconcile. This commentary, while still rather surface-level, is, in my opinion, much more prominent within the fabric of the film's story than the discussion about the soul, but more still could've been done with it.

Finally, at the end of the day, Chiller is just a nothing-burger of a movie. Unable to go all-out with his concepts or the violence, like in his feature films, Craven is reduced to telling a pretty run-of-the-mill story about an evil corporate executive that, were it not for the sci-fi/supernatural trappings sprinkled throughout and its having Craven's name attached to it, would've been completely forgotten along with thousands of other TV-movies. There's little in the way of real suspense, save for maybe the confrontation between Miles and Reverend Penny,

and Miles' attempt to have his way with Stacey before Marion shows up to stop him, and it doesn't help that the movie opens with a long, drawn out attempt at a scare that turns out to be a fake-out; the scenes where Miles kills Happy and Clarence Beeson have little-to-no impact; and the "climax," with Marion locking Miles in the freezer, calling the police, and ultimately having to kill him herself, is so "meh." And the final scene, with more storage tanks at the cryonics lab malfunctioning and beginning to thaw, is likely less a sequel-bait than an attempt to give the feeling that other families are going to experience this same horror, but it's still eye-rolling and unnecessary.

The music score was by Dana Kaproff, who has quite a long filmography on his IMDB page, although many of his credits are films, both theatrical and television, and shows that aren't that well-regarded are recognizable (some notable exceptions, at least in terms of how well-known they are, include Empire of the Ants and When A Stranger Calls, as well as episodes of The Bionic Woman, Hawaii Five-O, and the live-action Amazing Spider-Man show from the late 70's). IMDB also says he's an award-wining composer and songwriter, and maybe he is, but I doubt any of those accolades were for his music for Chiller, as it's among the most forgettable music to ever adorn a Wes Craven movie. Granted, I haven't been able to hear it in really good quality, but it's the definition of generic TV-movie scoring, doing little more than droning under the scenes for the most part and barely accentuating the action. The only piece that really resonates with me is this high-pitched, bell-like theme that you hear now and then, and even that's me reaching for some part of the score to actually talk about.

Getting back to the issue of quality, not only did that DVD version I first saw, the one whose cover you see here, look and sound really awful, but the film itself was badly cut up. I had a feeling there was stuff missing, as the disc immediately started up with the title, without any lead-ins or segues, often abruptly cut from one scene to another, and even stopped before the ending credits were finished, but what I didn't realize is that it was missing almost ten minutes worth of material. Among those missing are an actual opening, again in the cryonics lab, that shows the malfunction that causes Miles to prematurely thaw, followed by a text crawl explaining the principles of cryonics and how, up until now, no one has ever been resurrected from such suspension; a scene of Marion and Stacey at Miles' bedside, before Marion is called in to speak with the hospital administrator; and Marion, Stacey, and the house's staff preparing for Miles' return home. It may not seem like much in the long run, but the one scene does get across how long Miles has been comatose since his revival and how uncertain his future is, something I missed at first because the film went right into Marion's talk with the administrator, and the latter scene, among other things, sets up the photo of Miles with Happy, making the latter's hostility towards him, Miles' killing him, and his ripping up the photo more impactful. Unfortunately, while Craven's previous TV-movies have gotten much better home video releases, it doesn't look as though there's much demand to give one to Chiller. While better picture and audio, combined with what's missing from that one release, wouldn't solve any of the film's inherent problems, the sad state of its current version still puts it at a very unfair disadvantage.

While Chiller isn't bottom-of-the-barrel Wes Craven, as it's easier for me to sit through than The Hills Have Eyes Part II or My Soul To Take, and unlike the former, it feels like Craven was engaged and trying to say something with it, it's still only a few notches above them and some of his other films. While it has some good performances from capable actors like Beatrice Straight and Paul Sorvino, an interesting concept and commentary, and isolated instances of good makeup effects work, as a whole, it's let down by a mostly flat portrayal of its villain protagonist, its aforementioned interesting concept being used as little more window dressing for an otherwise standard story about an evil executive, an uninspired and forgettable music score, and the feeling that what Craven and company wanted to do was badly constrained by their doing it in a TV-movie in the 80's. Add in the story just never taking off, becoming truly suspenseful or affecting, or concluding in a satisfactory or interesting manner, and you've got one of Craven's most blase works, one that can only be recommended to completionists.