Scared Stiff

A waste of good plastic.

"Scared Stiff" is also known as "Treasure of Fear" on the American television title, and "You'll Be The Death Of Me Yet."

The three stooges could put this movie to shame.

Jack Haley (The Wizard of Oz's Tin Man) is the boss's nephew he is a reporter with no idea of what to report. He is sent on an assignment to Grape City; on the way to "Grape Center," he sits next to someone who is dispatched while the bus is in a tunnel.

Being detained as a suspect he may lose his job by not getting to Grape City on time. Meanwhile, the movie has the feel of "The Cat and the Canary" and it would have been great if they left the Jack Haley character out.

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.

The Oz Tin Man Jack Haley plays a soft daydreaming reporter who continually irritates his editor by missing out on real news stories. He keeps his job because he is the nephew of the newspaper boss. His main passion is chess and by chance he ends up in a place that houses the very valuable jeweled chess pieces of Kublai Khan. There is a dead body and an armed killer and intrigue where he is forced to stay. But rather than just running away from all that he is more anxious to get to a grape harvest 40 miles away to cover a routine story for the newspaper.

All the passengers of a Greyhound bus are forced to stay at a boarding house and winery combined while a dead body found on the bus is being investigated. The boarding house is home to eccentric twin brothers who each own their respective halves of a valuable chess set. Among the passengers who have to stay there is a boy genius who is also a prankster. In a crowded room he declares that there is a murderer among them while they all have to wait for the sheriff to arrive.

This lighthearted Paramount mystery is full of incident. There is a hilarious scene at the end when a bunch of crooks are retrieved from a wine vat. The film could have been a lot funnier with the right cast but the mystery element is interesting enough. It's just that Jack Haley and the background music is a little too overmuch at times. But I would watch this again and also 'One Body Too Many' (1944) which is another of Jack Haley's comic mysteries.

Like all Jack Haley roles, he raises what would have otherwise been a very boring plot to an excellent screwball farce complete with prat falls and fast-paced action. Veda Borg is the only other cast member to come close to keeping up with Haley, although a few quirky characters do make appearances (including one rather annoying child). If they had utilized them more to play off Jack Haley's comedy, this would be a 10 star movie. The plot is still generally a weak one, but the star more than makes up for it. Overall, a good rainy Sunday afternoon movie if there ever was one. If you liked this movie, watch Haley's "One Body Too Many", also an excellent screwball comedy with spooky overtones.

The TIN MAN.. Jack Haley with his Massachusetts accent is the big name in this one from Paramount, 1945. It's listed on Moonlight Movie Channel as "Scared Stiff", but the opening title card says "Treasure of Fear". Haley is Larry Elliot, the bumbling reporter that keeps making bad decisions in his reporter's stories. Haley should have demanded a re-write of the script... this was a couple years AFTER wizard of oz, so clearly he had star-power from that. Co-stars Ann Savage. This story is all over the place. and the bad guys keep saying "that's the dame, See? and give us the loot, See? i guess humphrey bogart started that. or maybe Ed Robinson. skip this one. It's a no -go. yecch. directed by Frank McDonald, who seems to have appeared about the same time as talkies did in hollywood. Pass on this one.