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Scared To Death

1947, Movie, NR, 65 mins

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The only Bela Lugosi film to be made in color, SCARED TO DEATH is a truly bizarre little mystery that tells its story entirely in flashbacks from the point of view of a corpse (Lamont) without any identifiable marks of a killing. (A dead person as a narrator was later to be used in SUNSET BOULEVARD, where William Holden played the unfortunate victim.) Set in a sanitarium run by the macabre Dr. Van Ee (Zucco), the film parades secret panels, trap doors, red-herring villains (Lugosi and dwarf actor Angelo Rossitto), comedy relief (Pendleton and Blake), and a fluorescent green death mask that seems to float on its own. Claustrophobic, eccentric, and at times downright incoherent, this film is oddly compelling in a warped sort of way, with the crude orange/green two-strip Cinecolor making the whole thing look like it's taking place in another dimension. leave a comment
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