Scared to Death (1947)

Director – William "Christy" Cabanne

Plot
Film Notes
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

A woman lies dead in a morgue. A doctor speculates as to the cause of her demise. The dead woman begins to speak from beyond the grave. Flashback to Laura, (the woman) who is being kept a prisoner by her husband and father-in-law, a doctor (George Zucco). Or is she refusing to divorce her husband and leave their lives? Why do the doctor's cousin – Dr Leonide (Bela Lugosi) and his dwarf companion named Indigo appear on the scene? Why does Bela Lugosi have to sleep in the same room as the dwarf? Why has a private detective been hired to guard a doctor's office? Why does a disembodied head in a green mask (though sometimes it's blue) continuously float outside the windows of the house? How do the Nazis figure in? Secrets are revealed. Or they are not. Meanwhile the corpse in morgue keeps interrupting.

Back to top

Film Notes

Waiting for Bela in Color

One of the earliest films that Alameda's Robert L. Lippert had a producer role in, Scared to Death is Bela Lugosi's only color film. It is an entertainment where murder, insanity, hypnotism, concentration camps, European night clubs and a ferocious need for coffee add up to 60 something minutes of Samuel Beckett-like dialogue and menacing, comic hi-jinks of absurdity. It's a film where characters in search of meaning go endlessly (and pointlessly) from one room to another with an occasional disappearance through a hedge or secret passageway. One moment a corpse speaks from beyond the grave breaking through "action" that goes nowhere and in the next moment a mask reveals all and nothing as a deaf and dumb dwarf rolls about on the floor and a detective sits in a waiting room waiting and hoping for a murder to occur.

Living "Snappily Ever After"

"I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on." So says Beckett. Watch Scared to Death and then try not to think about it. See what happens. You just might find yourself with a bicycle, but unable, or unwilling, or choosing not to ride.

The Cage of Reason

If you're feeling trapped by circumstance and indecision and really need a reason to watch this particular movie, just go back to the top of the Film Notes. It's all about Bela Lugosi (in color!), who also appears in four more Alameda TV "classic film" favorites – The Death Kiss, White Zombie, Invisible Ghost and Bride of the Monster.

Krapp's Last Trivia

• Nat Pendleton, the private detective, won a Sliver Medal for wrestling in the 1920 Olympics. Scared to Death was his last film.
• Angelo Rossito, the dwarf, also appeared with Bela Lugosi in The Corpse Vanishes, was a regular on H.R. Pufnstuf, and tripped his way through Roger Corman's psychedelic The Trip.
• Scared to Death was filmed in Cinecolor, an early color process used in the 1940's and early 1950's. Cinecolor is a 2 color process. One side of the film holds blue emulsion, the other side a red emulsion.

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

Back to top

Cast

Production Credits

Back to top

For more on...

Alameda's Robert L. Lippert
Samuel Beckett