Scared Stiff (1945)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A meek and mild chess reporter (!) gets involved in a mystery surrounding a valuable stolen chess set and murder aboard a train.In the Land of Oz, Jack Haley's a great Tin Man; in the land of screen detectives, he's a bust. His Larry Elliot is neither funny nor attention-getting. Instead, Elliot is basically feckless and in a dull, unamusing way. I don't know what the screenwriters were aiming for, but whatever, it didn't come off. The result is even odder since Mainwaring and Shane were two of the best scripters in the business. The mystery part too, sort of comes and goes, before collapsing into a badly staged climax. Then too, where does the title come from since there is no scary part.The one compensation is catching Detour's (1945) hard-case Ann Savage doing a 180, playing instead a sweetly supportive leading lady. Wouldn't have believed it without seeing it. And what's the deal with Barton MacLane as the tough desperado. He's wasted in what looks like a tacked-on role, maybe to boost marquee appeal. Too bad.Anyway, this is one of the least engaging of the amateur detective genre of which there were many at the time. In fact, the whole thing appears tacked together in a hurry-up editing room.

A crime comedy about a chess-deck and chessmen, rather modest as script and performance, TREASURE OF FEAR, with Jack Haley and Ann Savage, directed by Frank McDonald, has too many small ideas to assemble them into a story. A journalist's trip, a romance on the road, the quest for Marco Pollo's chess-deck and the hunt for a murderer are mixed in a story with mysterious, intriguing characters, in an unsatisfying and approximative way. The treatment is light and amusing, but also banal and clumsy. And it ain't too intelligent, either. The performances seem trite, but then the roles were badly written to begin with. A funny, more or less dysfunctional journalist is sent to write an article; he takes the GREYHOUND, stumbles into a murder case and is also co-opted into hiding an old chess-deck. He meets various inscrutable characters—oldsters, a couple of broads, an annoying kid. Too bad a possibly funny subject isn't well handled. The script is weak. So, perhaps this ain't the definitive Marco Pollo chess-deck comedy. It lacks that lively charm which proves that a mind contributed. For ambitious screenwriters, that's a challenge—to write the definitive Marco Pollo's chess-deck comedy.

Alas, a combination of weak direction and impossibly labored acting from the lead, Jack Haley, has firmly put the skids under a very promising script. True, despite Haley's strenuous efforts to undermine credibility, a number of sequences do succeed, particularly the action spots (such as the revolving wall and the slippery vat) in which director Frank McDonald suddenly comes to life. Otherwise he seems helpless to stem Haley's inveterate mugging. The support players are likewise overawed or outdistanced by the "star". Only Walter Baldwin, Lucien Littlefield, George E. Stone, Eily Malyon and Dick Curtis (in that order) manage to create believable yet interesting characters. Even the normally raucous Veda Ann Borg is incredibly subdued.By the humble standards of the Two Dollar Bills (the industry nickname for producers Bill Pine and Bill Thomas, who almost always worked in tandem), production values seem reasonably high. Not that it matters.

The plot of this movie has a forgetful chess editor going off to cover a grape festival. His uncle, who runs the paper, hopes this will turn him into a normal reporter (When he covered the funeral of the mayor he failed to mention a woman's suicide over the grave, nor does he mention the riot that occurred at the chess match he was covering when he was called away for the grape festival assignment.) In typical fashion he takes the wrong bus to the wrong place and ends up mixed up in with a gang of wanted killers.This was the first time I had ever knowingly watched a Jack Haley movie other than the Wizard of Oz. While I thought his performance was good I absolutely hated his character. No one could be that stupid and so unaware of what was going on around him. He's the type of person that you could set on fire and he'd pay it no mind. Its completely unbelievable. It ruins what should otherwise be an excellent little film that has a good B cast, some chills and thrills.If you're curious you could try it, perhaps Haley's character won't run you the wrong way, as for me this goes into the no need to repeat pile.