Disc Reviews

Two more episodes from Elvira’s Movie Macabre. The two films have little in common, but they do have odd little claims to fame. Scared to Death (1947) is Bela Lugosi’s only colour film. Tormented (1960), meanwhile, is actually pretty good for a Bert I. Gordon film, and features no back-projection-enlarged insects or people!

Scared to Death is narrated by the deceased Laura Van Ee (Molly Lamont). In a series of poorly-edited flashbacks, she recounts what led to her demise. A completely unsympathetic piece of work, she is in a loveless marriage, and suspects everyone from father-in-law George Zucco to shady performer Bela Lugosi to be out to get her. Somebody is, and does, and would-be comic relief Bill Raymond (Nat Pendleton) hopes to solve the murder to get back on the force. Old Dark House comedy-mysteries were old hat in the 30s, so 1947 is well past the expiration date of that subgenre. Furthermore, the house is neither old nor dark, and the colour doesn’t help matters of mood at all. This is absolutely stultifying, and has few equals as a cure for insomnia.

This particular double-bill of offerings (in the form of rather muddy, scratched prints) from Elvira’s Movie Macabre makes a certain odd kind of sense: each film features one of Victor Frankenstein’s female descendants up to no good: his daughter in Lady Frankenstein, and his granddaughter in the inaccurately titled Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.

Lady Frankenstein (1971)is the more interesting of the two (thought that doesn’t actually make it good). Joseph Cotten is unfortunate enough to be cast as Frankenstein, but fortunate enough to be kill off partway through, while his creature, the result of a botched brain transplant experiment, runs amok. His daughter (Rosalba Neri) picks up where her father left off, performing her own transplant for more lascivious purposes. Though definitely a weak example of Euro-Gothic, it still has a nice Olde Worlde feel to it, and has added interest due to the presence of erstwhile Little Shop of Horrors store owner Mel Welles co-writing and co-directing, but also Mickey Hargitay (best known now as either Mr. Jaynes Mansfield or Mariska Hargitay, Sr.) in the cast.

In the late-19^th Century, we find Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) as much in love with the idea of being a showgirl as she was in the original Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988). But given that Las Vegas doesn’t exist yet, she is on her way to Paris to be a can-can dancer. Elvira and her maid, Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith) take a detour through the Carpathians (naturally), where they wind up at the castle of Lord Vladimere Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien). It transpires that Elvira is the spitting image of Lord Hellsubus’s deceased first wife, and all kinds of scheming and counter-plotting begins on the part of the various factions in the spooky old castle.

This plot is, of course, little more than a means to the film’s real end: an endless parade of double-entendres and slapstick that would be considered dated and cheesy by Benny Hill. Naturally, not a single opportunity for a boob joke is passed up. Now, the gags are knowingly dated and cheesy, but that still doesn’t make them that funny. Elvira herself is rather difficult to warm up to this time around (being up against stuffy neighbours made her more sympathetic in the original). Here, she is a bit of the Bud Abbott to Zou Zou’s Lou Costello, but Abbott was never the centre of that comedy team’s films. The direction is rather pedestrian, too, never really building a good head of comic steam, and the film is rather dull to look at, despite its sets.