I just saw a horrible print of Paramount's "Treasure of Fear" or "Scared Stiff" from 1945 starring Jack Haley, Barton Maclane, Ann Savage, and Veta Ann Borg.This is a comedic murder mystery about a rotten reporter who normally covers chess, Larry (Jack Haley) who is supposed to go to Grape City and report on a beauty contest. Instead, he gets off at Grape Center and becomes involved in a murder -- since the person murdered was the man sitting next to him on the bus. Of course he's a suspect. He and some other bus passengers are staying at a tavern run by twin brothers who haven't spoken to one another for ten years. The two women who are there - one whom he knows from an antique store in his town - are there for a valuable chess set kept at the hotel by the twins. One has the white set and the other the black. Barton MacLane is an escaped convict the police are searching for. Like someone else whose review I read here, I couldn't believe Ann Savage's performance as a sweet, dulcet voiced, helpful woman. I mean she spit nails in Detour. WHAT an actress, and what a shame she retired early to move away with her husband. She came back much later, after his death, to receive raves all over again.And of course what's a B movie without Veda Ann Borg. She does her usual good job as an aggressive, man-hungry woman.As for Jack Haley, it seems no one liked him in this movie. I thought he was funny and played the dizzy character well. I wasn't annoyed by him at all.Not a great film, but if you're a fan of Ann Savage and haven't seen this incarnation of her, see this. A wonderful talent.

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.

Jack Haley stars as a bumbling reporter who has a chess column in the paper. However smart he is when it comes to this game, he's a rather absent-minded and oblivious writer--missing important non-chess stories that occur all around him. The newspaper owner is at his wits end and offers Haley one final chance--or he's fired. It seems all the REAL reporters are off investigating a sensational prison escape, so they have to have Haley report on a grape festival. But, when he gets on the wrong bus, he's pulled into another unexpected story, as the guy next to him is stabbed to death during this trip! And, naturally, they suspect Haley of this crime. Haley is torn between trying to sneak out of town to get to the festival and trying to solve the murder to get the police off him.This film is a comedy-mystery film and it tries very hard to be goofy--with middling results. Sometimes, it's cute and clever and sometimes it comes off as very forced--such as including the ridiculous child prodigy character. This kid is 100% unrealistic and just plain annoying--even though the writer clearly intended the kid to be comic relief. The only relief I might have felt was if HE had been the murder victim! And, as the film progressed, I kept hoping he'd be next! Fortunately, he's not in the movie all that much--otherwise I might have bailed on this movie before it concluded. What I did like was Haley and his pleasant performance. And, for a B-mystery film, this is pretty good for the most part. While not a great film, it's an agreeable film...plus the brat gets it in the end!

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.