Scared Stiff (1945) User Reviews

A lighthearted mystery that is interesting enough

[greenbudgie · 6/10 · 13 March 2021]

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.

Afraid Not

[boblipton · 5/10 · 14 November 2002]

Overwrought comedy-mystery suffers from unlikeable characters, poorly-paced script. The actors try hard, but between the bratty kid, the scatter-witted hero and the shrill heroine, even veteran character actor Lucien Littlefield (as identical twins who hate each other for unspecified reasons -- probably for signing the contract to be in this picture), the picture does not wear well.

silly B screwball comedy

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 6 December 2016]

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.

Awful lead character makes this a painful viewing experience

[dbborroughs · 2/10 · 24 January 2006]

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.

Not much here, but it's a fine excuse to talk about Edward Earle and Ben Bagley's Cole Porter Revisited, Volume 2

[Terrell-4 · 3/10 · 4 January 2009]

Larry Elliot (Jack Haley), first-rate chess enthusiast but fourth-rate newspaper reporter, is off to Grape City where the Grape City Winery will crown Miss Muscat. In a lovesick mistake, he buys a ticket to Grape Center where perky antique storeowner Sally Warren (Ann Savage) is headed to make a mysterious purchase. It only takes an instant to see that Elliot is naive, innocent, foolish and as dense as a pound of lard. Think of Haley here as unpleasantly like a dim second banana to Harry Langdon.

We wind up staying at the Grape Center Inn and Winery where an extremely valuable chess set has been hidden. This tired, tired mystery comedy features the inn's owners, the elderly, eccentric and competitive Walbeck brothers; the elderly and severe desk manager; the pain- in-the-rear child prodigy who thinks he knows all about fear stimuli; the glowering keeper of the prodigy; the not elderly at all Veda Ann Borg; the suspicious "Professor;" and a tough escaped murderer who just might be the owner of the chess set, There's creeping about at night, hidden passages, a turning door, a toupee, wine vats and a car horn. Jack Haley said once that if it weren't for the performance he gave as the Tin Woodman in The Wizard of Oz, he'd probably be forgotten. Sadly, it's true.

Scared Stiff tries for laughs and frights. If it doesn't succeed at least we've only wasted 65 minutes. For those who can remember two-movie matinees for 25 cents, where the audience didn't evaluate the laughs, just enjoyed them, it's difficult to come down hard on something like this. There's no harm intended and no harm caused.

In a brief opening scene an actor named Edward Earle plays, unbilled, Larry Elliot's impatient uncle. We see him once. Earle was born in 1882, had a reasonably successful career as a lead in the early silent movies but slipped to second leads by the start of the talkies. From there he faded precipitously. By the end of the Thirties he was doing unbilled bits, and stayed there through television until he finally called it a day in 1960. As an old man, Earle was asked by Ben Bagley to take part in Bagley's Revisited series...LPs (and then CDs) of little known songs Bagley discovered from some of the very best theater song writers. And it so it came about that Edward Earle sings several Cole Porter songs on Ben Bagley's Cole Porter Revisited Volume 2. He's funny, a bit lascivious when called for and knows exactly what he's doing to put across a Porter lyric. He's just grand. He's also memorable doing "Dainty Quainty Me," cut from The Seven Lively Arts because Bert Lahr refused to sing "enema' (which Porter rhymed with "cinema"}. In Bagley's Noel Coward Revisited, Earle sings three songs, including the unmistakably left-handed and sophisticated "Green Carnations," a witty song all can enjoy, especially if you're a young, languid man about town. Earle died, full of years, in 1972 at the California Motion Picture Country Home. He was 90.

not my cuppa tea.

[ksf-2 · 4/10 · 10 February 2018]

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.

Haley is no comet in this one!

[JohnHowardReid · 6/10 · 9 February 2007]

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.

Yikes not so good

[QueenoftheGoons · 2/10 · 28 June 2021]

I got this because i've always liked Haley. And he was good but the ring around in the cellar at the end was annoying. Dick Curtis was nice to pop in as the bus driver. Grandpa Miller from petticoat Junction was in it as was the gangster from the Munsters ep Herman picks a winner. But generally it wasn't so good at all.

Should Have Stayed in Oz

[dougdoepke · 22 April 2014]

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.

Tiresome comedy-mystery

[gridoon2024 · 5/10 · 23 May 2013]

Laughs....chills....howls....thrills! Or at least that's what the tagline promises. But you won't find too many of any of the above in "Scared Stiff". The setup is not unpromising (a murder in a bus as it's passing through a tunnel), but when the action settles down in a tavern / inn, the film becomes static: it is always a bad sign when an one-hour running time feels more like three. It's much more of a comedy than a mystery, but there are only two moderately funny sequences: one with a car that keeps honking when Haley approaches it, and one with several people coming in Haley's room and then hiding as other people, who must not see them there, keep coming. The DVD print of the Alpha version is in pretty poor shape, but I suppose we should be thankful that some of these obscure B-movies are available at all. ** out of 4.

Chess, a dangerous game

[bkoganbing · 3/10 · 23 February 2015]

I make a point of watching films with Veda Ann Borg. She's usually the highlight of any film she's in and she did a whole lot of B films in her career and they needed her. But for some reason she's very subdued as an insurance agent. Had she been her usual self she might gotten a notch or two more in ratings for this very tired comedy/mystery.

I don't think that Jack Haley could do much with this character, he's as dumb as a post except for chess. He's a chess reporter for a local paper, but they don't have that much call for coverage of chess matches in those days before Bobby Fischer. So after this doofus has missed yet another good story his editor Roger Pryor sends him out to cover a beauty contest in another city.

But another beauty played by Ann Savage distracts him and Haley buys a ticket to the wrong destination. A murder occurs on the Greyhound bus he was traveling on and all the passengers have to spend the night at a spooky tavern run by brothers, both played by Lucien Littlefield who comes off best in the mess.

The story involves a valuable bejeweled chess set, an escaped killer from the penitentiary played by Barton MacLane, his goofy drunken sidekick George E. Stone and how they're all connected. Someone murders to get the chess set.

I do like Jack Haley, but there was nothing he could have done to make his character appealing rather than annoying. The whole movie fails because of it.

A well-done screwball comedy, set in a dark and spooky house.

[loradean192 · 25 October 2011]

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.

Pretty good aside from an obnoxious child...

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 9 October 2010]

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!

The bishop hit me!

[Bernie4444 · 4/10 · 22 January 2024]

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.

Scared Stiff -1945

[coltras35 · 4/10 · 5 March 2023]

At his uncle's newspaper where Larry Elliot (Jack Haley) works as a reporter specializing in chess, he is known to miss out on bigger stories to cover more trivial events of minor interest. Confronted with an ultimatum if he wants to keep his job, Larry is assigned to cover a big harvest festival held at a winery in Grape City.

Larry begins with getting off the bus at the wrong stop, Grape Center instead of Grape City. He has brought along his girlfriend Sally Warren (Ann Savage), who deals in antiques. Accidents rarely come alone, and the man sitting next to Larry on the bus is found murdered, holding a chess piece in his hand when the police find him. Of course Larry, who is a chess expert, is blamed for the killing.

Routine comedy starring Jack Haley is mildly entertaining- it starts well but then halfway it gets a little monotonous and can be a bit lacklustre. But Jack Haley and Ann Savage keep things simmering. There's some good one liners.

Bring on Jack Haley & please find him some courage!

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 28 January 2014]

A year after the very similar "One Body Too Many", Jack Haley was back at Paramount's low-budget Pine Thomas for another "Z" grade programmer that basically repeats the same theme, albeit in a different setting. For that earlier film, he was an insurance salesman in a spooky mansion where the bodies lined up, and now he's both on a bus and in a haunted hotel where even more corpses find their way into his path. He's a reporter who is on the verge of losing his job and after getting his final chance to get the story, makes the mistake of ending up in the wrong city. Here, the motives for murder vary but all seemingly surround valuable chess pieces and a variety of sinister types including twins who can't stand each other, a recently released bank robber, and a few shady dames.

The results of this film are dated humor where groans take place more than laughs. Those who remember Ann Savage from the film noir classic "Detour" will find her rather staid here, her tough presence in that film unforgettable, but her character here nowhere near as interesting. Some amusing moments are provided by the most feminine of tough girls, Veda Ann Borg, while former "B" leading man Roger Pryor is wasted as Haley's boss. Eily Malyon takes over the type of character that Blanche Yurka played in "One Body Too Many" while in certain close-ups, her on-screen husband, Arthur Aylesworth resembles Yurka's hubby from the other film, Bela Lugosi.

Some ideas for a comedy, and no means to use them

[Cristi_Ciopron · 5/10 · 17 December 2009]

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.