Scared to Death (1947 film)

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Scared to Death is a 1947 American gothic thriller film directed by Christy Cabanne and starring Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Nat Pendleton and Molly Lamont.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The picture was filmed in Cinecolor. The film is historically important as the only color film in which Bela Lugosi has a starring role.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Lionel Atwill was originally slated to appear in the film, but he was too ill to work, so George Zucco replaced him in the cast. Christy Cabanne completed the film in early 1946, but it wasn't screened until 1947.<ref name="auto">Lugosi: His Life on Film, Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers by Gary D. Rhodes (2006) McFarland & Company. pg. 136. ISBN 978-0786427659</ref>

Plot

File:Béla Lugosi-Angelo Rossitto in Scared to Death.jpg

Lugosi and Rossitto

File:Scared to Death (1947) trailer 2.jpg

The film opens with the disclosure by morgue examiners that a beautiful woman has literally died of fright. The plot reveals how she reached the fatal stage of terror.

The woman is married to the son of a doctor, the proprietor of a private sanatorium, where she is under unwilling treatment. Both the son and the doctor indicate they want the marriage dissolved. Arriving at the scene is a mysterious personage (Bela Lugosi) identified as the doctor's cousin who had been a stage magician in Europe. He is accompanied by a threatening dwarf (Angelo Rossitto).

After it is apparent that the wife is terrified of the foreigners, it is disclosed that she is the former wife and stage partner of a Paris magician known as René, who was believed to have been shot by the Nazis. Attempts to draw a confession that she had betrayed her magician husband and had collaborated with the Nazis led to the use of a device employing a death mask of the supposedly dead patriot, which literally frightens her to death.

Although the young newspaperman hero and his sweetheart guess the answer to the story, they allow the diagnosis "scared to death" to stand.

Cast

Bela Lugosi as Prof. Leonide
George Zucco as Dr. Joseph Van Ee
Nat Pendleton as Bill Raymond
Molly Lamont as Laura Van Ee / Laurette La Valle
Joyce Compton as Jane Cornell
Gladys Blake as Lilybeth
Roland Varno as Ward Van Ee
Douglas Fowley as Terry Lee
Stanley Andrews as Pathologist
Angelo Rossitto as Indigo
Lee Bennett as Rene
Stanley Price as Autopsy Surgeon

Production

The film was based on a one-act play which in turn was based on a 1933 murder case involving Dr. Alice Wynekoop.<ref name="robert">Mark Thomas McGee, Talk's Cheap, Action's Expensive: The Films of Robert L. Lippert, Bear Manor Media, 2014 p 108</ref>

The film was announced in March 1946 as Accent on Horror.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Autopsy was another title that was considered.<ref name="auto"/>

Reviews

Historian Gary Don Rhodes commented that although the film was in color, "nothing manages to stave off the inevitable boredom. Critics found the film confusing, dull....Very possibly this remains Lugosi's worst horror film."<ref name="auto"/>