dieselfarina I gave it 5 stars because I can't decide if it's too awful or too fun! Everything in the other reviews is true ... this is campy, overdone, and terrible. But it's so much fun! Bela Legosi is cartoonish, as usual. (I wonder if the people in the 40s really found him scary? It's hard for us to judge with today's sensibilities.) What would make it a perfect movie would be Abbot and Costello. If they were part of it, then the whole thing would be considered a classic. But sadly, I do think those involved were trying to make a serious movie, so I feel a bit sorry for them as we all laugh with delight at the sheer badness of it. Worth watching for the fun of it.

mark.waltz Don't be confused by the vivid color in this deliciously silly thriller with tons of comedy-both intentional and accidental. This actually was photographed in a process known as "Tru Color". This is the type of film that Mystery Science Theater used to depend on to ridicule, so wonderfully preposterous and poorly made that you might end up with an eternal grin that freezes from viewing the absurdity, that is if your eyeballs don't end up in the back of your head for rolling them too hard. Horror greats George Zucco and Bela Lugosi are enemy cousins, tossed together here like Lugosi and Boris Karloff in "The Black Cat" to toss barbs over an old vendetta that is never explained. Zucco's son (Roland Varno) is married to extremely nasty Molly Lamont who is being haunted by a mysterious person in a green mask whose image keeps appearing in the window in an attempt to frighten her.Comedy relief is provided by the bumbling Nat Pendleton who is in love with the sarcastic maid (Gladys Blake). Others present include diminutive Angelo Rossito as Lugosi's companion, Douglas Fowley as an obnoxious reporter, and Joyce Compton as his girlfriend, and the sudden appearance of an obvious man in drag looking like something out of "Glen or Glenda". The film is narrated by Lamont's corpse, already dead as the film starts, giving the impression that a dead body's brain can still think. The narration is intertwined with extremely wretched editing and eerie music that pops up every time her corpse is shown. The conclusion is hardly worth waiting for. Enjoy it purely as fun crap with plenty of moments to laugh at, not with.

zardoz-13 If Bela Lugosi weren't in "Scared to Death," I would probably have skipped it. As it is, the producers used the "Dracula" star simply as a red herring. He shows up at a doctor's office with a dwarf and lurks mysteriously in the shadows and shrubs. The action focuses on a girl named Laura who is married to the son of the doctor (George Zucco), but she acts like she is a hostage in the house. Most of everything that we learn about Laura occurs as a result of her memories of the past. What makes "Scared to Death" such an oddball opus is that Laura narrates the film from the slab of an autopsy room. Exactly why she undertakes this task is anybody's guess. Not surprisingly, she died--as we discover in the final quarter of the film because she saw a man who she believed was dead, shot by the Nazis. The final five minutes unloads a treasure trove of exposition and revelations that you are not prepared for during the previous 50 minutes. The story unfolds at the doctor's office as Professor Leonide shows up with his dwarf Indigo. Pay close attention to the first few minutes after the autopsy room. Lugosi is appropriately flamboyant while Zucco is all business. About half-way through the story, a wisecracking reporter, Terry, shows up with his future wife. Nat Pendleton is amusing as a cop who is no longer on the force. "Scared to Death" is a low-budget epic shot in color.

bkoganbing Poor Bela Lugosi trapped in another low budget shlock horror film for the independent Golden Gate Productions in Scared To Death. This time however he has plenty of company.It's possible that Billy Wilder got the idea to have William Holden narrate Sunset Boulevard in flashback from the next world. In this one Molly Lamont lies on a slab at the morgue and her voice over starts the narration of how she got there as the medical examiner also tries to figure it out.In life Lamont was the shrewish wife of Roland Varno and daughter-in-law of George Zucco who runs a mental asylum and the family resides on the ground. When Zucco gets a visit from Lugosi and his dwarf companion things start to pop around the old nut house.I'm still trying to figure out the plot, the writing was so bad. I will say that the players do what they can with the lousy material. Nat Pendleton who plays a dumb house detective has the best moments in the film, but they aren't enough to save it.