Scared to Death (1947)

 

Director: Christy Cabanne

Screenplay: Walter Abbott

Cast: Bela Lugosi as Prof. Leonide; George Zucco as Dr. Joseph Van Ee; Nat Pendleton as Bill Raymond; Molly Lamont as  Laura Van Ee; Joyce Compton as Jane Cornell; Gladys Blake as Lilybeth; Roland Varno as Ward Van Ee; Douglas Fowley as Terry Lee; Angelo Rossitto as Indigo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #203

 

Metabolism. That's a good word. I wonder what it means?

You could pad out your writing just on bad horror films, which can cause a lot of grief through the act of forcing yourself to churn through a lot of disappointing work. If your expectations are to just review good ones, that in its self can be as pointless as, with horror cinema a subject covered greatly, everyone else has likely covered said films and it lacks interest for me particularly to repeat what everyone else does. Far more rewarding are the personal favourites, discoveries or those films which, whilst not great, allow you a lot to write about.

So let us be thankful for Scared to Death. It is not a great film, part of the time period, after his success with Dracula (1931), when Bela Lugosi had difficulty finding work but took anything he could get to pay the bills. Thankfully, legacy allows figures like Lugosi to shine, where even this public domain production intrigues as much as his successes. Also bless, this Golden Gate Pictures Inc. Production, from the era of independent low budget genre filmmaking, whilst a convoluted mess, also happens to be a charming one with so much to write about a swell.

For starters, the film is inspired by a real 1933 murder case involving Dr. Alice Wynekoop, a well-known and respected physician, civic leader, and lecturer who was charged for and eventually imprisoned for the murder of her 22 year old daughter-in-law¹. The film barely, frankly, re-tales the subject but merely uses it for a jumping pad for its own bizarre story. We start off in a morgue, moving to the body of Laura (Molly Lamont), which flashes back to when she was alive and tells the story up to that moment there. I have probably referenced old horror radio broadcasts from the United States in the past, but at first, this is literally one filmed in tone and attitude, worth bringing that up again.

In mind to its gristly real life tale, where Wynekoop was a very devoted mother to her son, Laura is a woman with a fragile continence, always watching behind her back for shadows, especially green masked ones, all whilst her relationship with her husband is close to separation and frayed, her father-in-law a psychiatrist possibly wanting to help his son in nefarious means. The film has no real interest in adapting the real case at all, and it can be lost within the film entirely. Instead, when Prof. Leonide (Bela Lugosi) enters their home as a guest as a mysterious figure, the premise gets more complicated and moves closer to a radio show like Suspense even in terms of the music, whilst with more constant orchestra, and using dialogue to convey the narrative rather than using the visuals.

Scared to Death is far more bloated than this comparison suggests though. Lugosi comes in with so much charisma that it is tragic, whilst he helped sell the film in its day in the advertising, he plays a secondary role to an overlarge cast. His assistant, a deaf-mute dwarf, is also Angelo Rossitto, a prolific actor most known for Tod Browing's Freaks (1932), bared used as an actor at all throughout. There is a reporter, a chauvinist and bland one, and his dim-witted if so much more sympathetic beau, a telephone operator who joins him at the house. The other character of note is Bill Raymond, the bowler hated cop wanting to woo the house staff and hoping even for "one slightly murdered body" to get back his job with the police from. A giant lummox of a man, Raymond is at first way too broad a comedy foil, until after a while winning me over.

Simple minded, wishing to be a great detective, and with a propensity for very flourished and smarter vocabulary that appears in his speech, which he does not understand the meaning of, Raymond won me over. The actor himself Nat Pendleton is another figure of interest too which helps considerably. Looking like a heavy for a crime film from the era, awkwardly here of all places, Pendleton was originally a wrestler who won the silver medal at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp in Belgium, before transitioning to pro wrestling. He transitioned to acting in the 1920s, one of his most prominent roles in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the 9th Academy Awards Best Picture winner. By Scared to Death, this would be his penultimate film before the end of his cinematic career and, bless him, he was memorable and helped me love this film legitimately

Examples like Pendleton are why even this production could win me over. It is a production not helped by the fact that it feels like an overstuffed stage play, shot in a way that you could with some modification actually stage it for theatre but with a lot of unnecessary plot baggage. Considering Lugosi is your main get, even in the period before his encounters with Ed Wood. Jr. in the fifties, he is lost here in the shuffle and there is so much put in for a film only an hour and seven minutes long. What you get thankfully is still compelling because of its odd quirks. Production wise, it is very conventionally shot as mentioned. Striking however is the fact this late forties low budget film is shot in "natural colour". Even this is a distinct thing of interest as it was shot in Cinecolor, a two colour process that, even in a public domain version that looks muddy, has a curious history, one of many vying for use before Technicolor took hold and left the likes of this process lost by the wayside. One touch which is just weird is the constant flashes back to Laura's head on the morgue table with her voice stating the next event in the plot whilst an eerie music cue is used. It is constant, they can last a few second, and are deeply silly, a sign of how over baked and charmingly shambolic Scared to Death is.

Particularity because of its vintage, as a forties pulp tale in its own ballpark, it is of its era, such as how much of an arse that reporter is to his girlfriend in his patronising ways, but there are plenty of odd touches to like. Working to actual violence, it has to racket up ghoulishness with a striking looking dummy's head but not a great deal of illicit content or any real threat, which is not an issue at all. In mind to the original Wynekoop case, her daughter-in-law Rheta was said to have died, by her own testimony, whilst treating her with pain with a chloroform anaesthetic, only for her heart to have stopped. [Spoiler Warning] Here, well, that title the film has surely would have given the plot twist away before you watched the whole film. [Spoiler Ends] What you do not expect is the film, partially in horror, to get a morality edge involving betrayal, hypnosis, karmic revenge, and a back-story including someone being betrayed to the Nazis and Parisian nightclub entertainment crammed into this slight length production. It is as if all the pulpy tropes which would vanish from modern horror were blended together into something compelling here. It is goofy, but with an undeniable charm.

=====

1) The full tale can be read of HERE.