Scared to Death was Bela Lugosi’s only color film and it’s a crazy-ass mixture of slapstick and horror, especially for a film with a concentration-camp subplot! It opens at the city morgue, where doctors prepare to perform an autopsy on a “beautiful girl,” who then narrates her own story as it clumsily unfolds in flashback.
She’s the daughter of a physician, in whose house she lives with her husband and a maid. She’s not right in the head, which is no surprise, given the home’s open-door policy to any guest that stumbles by, including magician Lugosi and his deaf dwarf assistant, Indigo, as well as the nosy reporter, his plucky girlfriend and a brick-dumb cop. The woman lives in fear of being killed by a stranger. Every so often, a green, featureless mask floats by the window outside.
I know that filmmaking was still pretty antiquated back in 1947, but you’d think the filmmakers would have been smart enough not to begin with an autopsy if they wanted audiences to be surprised when the lead female dies at the end. You’d also think they’d have the foresight not to end with the line “She was … scared to death!” but they didn’t, and God bless them for it. —Rod Lott