Even with the presence of Bela Lugosi, Scared to Death was pretty difficult to sit through. It's the first time I've ever had such a short runtime (65 minutes) feel so damned long. When I pop in a disc from the 50 Tales of Terror box set, I don't necessarily expect a screwball comedy... and unlike A Walking Nightmare from a week or so ago, Scared to Death was *not* a pleasant surprise. It just sucked.
Scared to Death opens in a morgue, where a couple of morticians bemoan their task, because "one hates to perform an autopsy on such a beautiful woman." As opposed to all of the ugly people they love opening up. The police want to know the cause of death ASAP... guess how she died? "Lucky" for us, the corpse can talk to the audience, and we spend the movie watching the events that led to her death.
Her name is Laura, and she's a real asshole. It's a big mistake making her so damned unlikable (there is literally not one redeeming quality about her)... you know she's going to die, but there is no tension. Aside from giving away the cause in the title, you're excited for her demise. But it takes its sweet time getting there. Laura is in an extremely unhappy marriage - you know, the kind where you won't get a divorce to spite the other person. She is convinced that her husband and her doctor father-in-law are in cahoots to make her go crazy, and therefore out of their lives for good. Other than the morgue the movie exclusively takes place in the father's Doctor's office/home, where there is a bodyguard on hand to keep an eye on things. And then, who should show up but Prof. Leonide (Bela Lugosi), who has a tangled past with the Doctor, and Leonide's dwarf assistant. Leonide's motives for visiting are unclear, but presumably suspect, being Bela Lugosi and all. Shenanigans, potentially supernatural, ensue - mostly revolving around a masked figure peeping in the windows.
The most notable thing about StD (ha!) is that the main characters are all really grating and annoying. As I've mentioned before, Laura is a horrible human being who sucks to spend time with. But even more bothersome is the bodyguard protecting the Doctor's office. He's best described as a knucklehead, and his dumb guy comedy would be tolerable if it happened in small doses. Unfortunately, even though he is not the main character plot-wise, he seems to have the most screen time. Then, about halfway through the film, a reporter shows up and tries to wrest the title of "most obnoxious character" away from him. It's quite a battle, let me tell you. They've both got this schtick that is impossible to get into. Part of me wants to think that's because it's really old... although another part of me just thinks it's bad schtick.
Despite getting top billing, Lugosi isn't around enough to make much of an impact. You get some fun shots of him lurking around the office grounds, and he gets the best lines of the film. When meeting a cop, he says "Sir, there is an air of inquiry about you that immediately offends my deepest nature." I'm totally using that the next time I get pulled over. Lugosi is always an engaging presence and his delivery here is great as usual. He is easily the best thing in Scared to Death, and it isn't even close.
The film has this weird framing device where they keep cutting back to Laura's body in the morgue. There will be dream sequence music and camera work to fade out from a scene in the house (fuzzy visuals and harp-ish music), she'll say a brief phrase, and they'll fade back to the "action." It's really jarring and the interruptions are just comically short.
So as you can guess, I think this film is a total mess. And I almost wonder if they filmed the stuff with Lugosi/the Doctor/Laura/etc. and realized it didn't make sense, and then threw in the Laura in the morgue business to try and help explain things. If so, it didn't make things any better.
The best thing I can say about it? Being from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set, it actually looks okay. It's in color ("natural color," according to the title screen) and is a little washed out, but looks better than most other films on the set. It's decently shot - the camera work/editing never distracts from the story. Which here wouldn't have been too bad - I could have used some distractions.
Overall, this was a pretty rough one. It was one of those films where time just seemed to slow down while I was watching it. That is never a good thing.
I would not recommend this film.
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