Friday, August 3, 2012

SCARED TO DEATH / Golden Gate Pictures - 1947

Itz Friday Fright with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Our feature is a post war color movie starring two of our favorite scary guys, Bela Lugosi and George Zucco, and, has Angelo Rossitto as Bela's lil' helper. The story's about a dead young woman who tells the bizarre tale from a slab in the morgue of how she ended up there. She tells a tale of murder involving a doctor, a hypnotist, a midget and a mysterious figure in a blue mask. It was directed by the prolific Christy (THE MUMMY'S HAND) Cabanne, who also had 58 acting and 46 writing credits.

Hey!!.. Eegah!! sent us over a nice soundclip for us to enjoy, sooooo, you might as well go ahead and push that there big red 'GO' button catty corner from the normal-sized atomic stairwell, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here are some spooky sounds from... SCARED TO DEATH!

Molly Lamont plays the girl on the morgue slab, she begins to tell the weird story about how she got there. So, it basically starts at the end...

She plays two parts, Laura Van Ee and Laurette La Valle. One of her is married to Dr. Joseph Van Ee, played by George.

Bela plays hypnotist, Professor Leonoid, and Angelo plays helper, Indigo. They show up unannounced, making for an interesting mix of characters. Nat Pendleton plays detective, Bill Raymond, he sits around a house waiting for someone to be murdered so that he can impress his superiors at the police station!

Laurette gets a little present from an unknown friend, her own head!!

Douglas Fowley plays family friend Terry Lee, we remember him from CATWOMEN OF THE MOON and MACUMBA LOVE and he ended up with a staggering 326 acting credits! Also, indy Hollywood record producer Kim Fowley is his son. Here he is, discussing weird theories about the mind with the professor in the green room.

Joyce Compton plays Jane Cornell, she's having trouble napping. Joyce also had a small part in MIGHTY JOE YOUNG.

The maid seems to be in a trance, so, it takes Professor Leonide's expertise to snap her out of it. Then, there's a mysterious game being played downstairs in the darkened parlor!

Out of the nowhere, that infernal blue mask appears again!.. So scary!!

The super scary blue mask literally scares Laurette or Laura to death from fright. To put it in simple English.. Alles ist kaput!

The boys sort everything out as the cop dressed in drag shows up after the case is solved.

So, we'll end our story where it began, at the morgue! Laurette finishes her tale, and, they pull the sheet over her face...

This is how you got SCARED TO DEATH in 1980!

4 comments:

Exeter said...

WoW!
OK, right now, I am getting out VHS tape #133! even if it is hiding behind some CDs!
Thanks for your exceptional blog!

TABONGA! said...

Our pleasure, Ex -

Miles said...

I howled til I was blue in the face!

Greg Goodsell said...

This movie got a bad rap for being narrated by a female corpse, but SUNSET BOULEVARD got away with the exact same thing three years later.

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