Scared To Death (1947)

Genre: Horror, Psychological, Revenge

Source: My Own Collection

Grade: A


     Now this movie provided many unique experiences such as;  being the only color film that stared Bela Lugosi, the film was told through the point of view of the already dead protagonist (you`ll see what I mean when you watch it), and it was one of the only if not only movie to have BOTH George Zucco and Bela Lugosi star in together.

      I remember the first time I read about this movie and how it was filmed in Color and starred Bela. Thinking at first that that was way to good to be true I went on a mission to find it. Which really didn`t take to long since the films in Public Domain I was able to pick it up at "Big Lots" on a budget pack for an extremely cheap price! I believe it was only one dollar for a four pack of Bela Lugosi films, so 25 Cents was all I really paid for to acquire this movie. Which I must say it was completely worth it!
      The films story is a bit unique and gets rather odd at times. Don`t get me wrong now, it was still a a pretty good movie. But I cant understand why they decided to have the entire movie told from the point of view of a dead girl, who wasn`t even a good character. She was a complete bitch in the whole movie and was made completely unsympathetic. The way she dies though was really sweet, shes you guessed it Scared To Death! I won`t say how, but its pretty cool the way the "murderer" does it.
         The only other thing other then this movie being in color, that stands out is the All-Star Cast. Its got the great George Zucco as the mysterious doctor, though the role was supposed to go to Lionel Atwill but he was quite literally dieing, so Zucco was called in to replace him. Which I think worked out rather well because Zucco was perfect for the role and his style of acting is very similar to Lionel Atwills anyways. Next you had good old Bela Lugosi as the mysterious magician, he brought some great sinister traits to that character that only Lugosi would be able to do. You even get  to hear him scold his midget assistant in his native language of Hungarian for about a second.  Now that Midget also has a track record of appearing in many great horror films such as Tod Browings "Freaks" and also starred with Lugosi in two other horror pictures other than this one such as "The Corpse Vanishes" and the very funny Horror Comedy "Spooks Run Wild". To this day he is my all time favorite midget actors.

All around this was a fun movie to watch. I loved seeing all these great actors like Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, and the midget actor Angelo Rossitto all in the same movie. This was a very good "who done it and why is everyone acting so weird" style mystery horror movie. Of course its not Bela Lugosi`s best movie, but it is his only movie that he stared in that has color, that alone should make this movie worth checking out for all the Lugosi fans who have not yet seen it.