5/5 GORGEOUS print -- just amazing!
  by Stuart Gardner (Interzone, Alphaville)
You don't need to be told about this film, you just want to know if this is the DVD to buy.
YES, it is. The quality of this print is astounding. It's beautiful, sharp and clear, and even the TRAILER for the film (included on the disc) is in good shape.
Under ordinary circumstances I'd be happy with the quality of this print and trailer (and even with the quality of the transfer), but considering what a cheap little public domain title SCARED TO DEATH is, and the fact that the quality of this DVD label's products varies wildly, I am stunned. I think you will be, too.

4/5 ALPHA PRINT!!!!!
  by larryj1 (az)
This is one of Alpha's better looking releases. There are some minor issues with the picture quality, but overall looks pretty decent. Interesting cast makes for a lot of fun.

2/5 Bela in Living Color
  by Scott Rivers (Los Angeles, CA USA)
"Scared to Death" (1947) is a bizarre mixture of horror, mystery and comedy. The low-budget production remains notable for being the only color film to star Bela Lugosi (who wears his Dracula cape in yet another red herring role). Another unique distinction is the jarring flashback structure - with narration provided by a dead woman in the city morgue! The B-movie cast includes George Zucco, Molly Lamont, Angelo Rossitto and the archaic comic relief of Nat Pendleton. Running 67 minutes, "Scared to Death" benefits from Bela's striking Cinecolor presence and its decidedly weird atmosphere. Not a particularly good film, but a watchable curio.

1/5 Pathetic.
  by Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
Scared to Death (Christy Cabanne, 1947)

Christy Cabanne made over one hundred sixty films in a career spanning over three decades. Scared to Death is one of the last he made, and it conclusively proves one fact: all that experience didn't make him any better a director. That it survives at all may be attributable to a single fact: it is the only color film in which Bela Lugosi starred.

The plot, if I can call it that: A dead woman (Molly Lamont) tells the story of how she died from the morgue. Her death involved a cadre of odd characters, a long-buried secret past, a dwarf, and an odd floating green mask, and the most annoying flashback sound in history.

Honestly, this probably wouldn't be an entirely awful film if not for the persistent and frequent overuse of the flashback motif. Every few minutes, we cut back to a scene of Lamont in the morgue, she speaks a sentence or two, and them whip!, it's time for the fuzzy screen and the cheap theremin effect again. Once you've heard it thirty or so times in the space of a sixty-five-minute movie, you'll get what I'm talking about. It doesn't help, however, that the flashback scenes themselves are pretty pedestrian. The comic relief is over-the-top and often forced, the acting is oftentimes atrocious, the film is littered with exposition (usually in the form of "as you know, Bob" moments) where action would have been a better choice, and the length of the movie almost ensures the pace will be constantly rushed. But still, it would be watchably silly if not for popping in and out of the story every couple of minutes for some narration-by-stiff. It's like watching a horror film on broadcast TV and trying to be scared when you're getting smacked with a deodorant commercial every fifteen minutes, as someone wiser than I once said. (half)


5/5 Horror Comedy
  by Charles J. Rector (Woodstock, IL United States)
Scared to Death is a rare example of a horror parody that works both as horror and comedy. Usually such flicks work as comedies, but utterly fail in the horror department. Scared to Death does a great job of establishing a creepy, moody atmosphere.

Scared to Death features strong performances, most notably from Bela Lugosi, George Zucco and Nat Pendleton. The movie itself is quite lovely to look at. The film was shot in "natural color" which is quite similar to two strip Technicolor such as that used in the 1933 horror classic Mystery of the Wax Museum.

Scared to Death's script is quite strong and features such great lines as "Do not treat Igor with respect...it only offends him!" In another scene, Nat Pendleton's character tells a lady that he wishes that she would drop dead so he would have a murder to investigate.

Scared to Death works both as horror and comedy and as such is warmly recommended.