You know you're in trouble when the opening scene reveals that the narrator of the film is going to be a corpse. The coroner wonders out loud about the beautiful victim's final thoughts. The greenish woman on the slab obliges by setting us up for a series of flashbacks.<br /><br />The director likes the shot of her green face so much that he returns to it over and over again in the film. Always the same shot with the poorly-edited "wooo...wooo" music in the background. Always the same length, which sometimes requires the narrator to pick up the pace in order to squeeze her lines into the allotted time frame.<br /><br />The movie is designed to help us discover how this woman died. Here's a big hint: read the title of the film again.<br /><br />SCARED TO DEATH is barely over an hour long, but has enough plot threads for a mini-series:<br /><br />1. Woman is being "gaslighted" by her estranged husband. Or is she just cracking up on her own? My opinion is that more liberal divorce laws in 1947 would have eliminated the need for the last 60 minutes of the film.<br /><br />2. Doctor, who seems to have his office and clinic in his house, is being blackmailed by a strange woman who disappears after the first five minutes...or does she? This woman is played by a thespian who I guess only attended Acting Lesson #1: How to use your eyebrows for emphasis. <br /><br />3. Dopey cop (Nat Pendleton from the Dr. Kildare film series) is the doctor's security man, but is trying to earn his way back onto the police force by solving a murder which he hopes will happen soon. <br /><br />4. Cop is in love with the doctor's nurse/maid. This is supposed to be the comic relief, but the whole film is a massive joke, so who needs relief? And after hearing him say "Lilly Bet" about 20 times, you'll want to smack him upside the head.<br /><br />5. Strange traveling magician with dwarf pal, who know all about secret passages in the house, show up and threaten everyone.<br /><br />6. Local reporter keeps popping up, trying to discover what the "story" is at the doctor's place.<br /><br />I'm sure I'm forgetting a few plot lines. This choppy mess is held together by the flashbacks mentioned earlier, and ends with a "huh?" because the perpetrator turns out to be someone we've completely forgotten about. (But it satisfies Roger Ebert's law that there are no extraneous characters.)<br /><br />My wife wandered through the room while I was viewing, and asked, "Why are you wasting time with this crap?" I answered, "Because it's so terribly awful that I HAVE to watch it." And that's my recommendation to you. If you enjoy an hour of jaw-dropping unbelief at just how bad a movie can be, this is a flick for you. Not to mention seeing Bela Lugosi in color (even though the color is gangrenous and blotchy). You might just laugh yourself...to death!