Scared To Death (1947) - Video On Demand

Scared To Death - Movie Review

Bela Lugosi stars in Scared to Death, a funny and freaky horror thriller. Notably Lugosi’s only appearance in a color film, Scared to Death begins encouragingly with a dead woman lying on a slab in the morgue, beginning to narrate the circumstances which lead to her death, through a maze of murder involving a hypnotist, a midget and a mysterious figure in a blue mask.

Completed several years before its 1947 release, Scared to Death is historically important as Bela Lugosi's only color film (outside of his brief unbilled appearance in 1931's Fifty Million Frenchmen, which today exists only in black & white). Other than that, it's a story of how a beautiful but treacherous young woman (Molly Lamont) literally dies of fright. Anticipating Sunset Boulevard by at least five years, the film is narrated by the deceased "heroine", meaning that suspense and surprise are hardly considerations here. It's a toss-up as to who's funnier: the film's official comedy relief, dumb detective Nat Pendleton and dumber blonde Joyce Compton, or the "odd couple" team of the caped-and-cloaked Bela Lugosi and his dress-alike dwarf companion Angelo Rossitto. For the record, Lugosi plays a sinister hypnotist named Leonide, yet another of his myriad of "red herring" roles in the 1940s.

This unwholesomely aberrant start grows into a mixture of hilarious intentional and unintentional comedy and creepy weirdness! Funky, creepy, and fun, Scared to Death is top notch popcorn fun.

Scared To Death - Cast & Crew

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