SCARED STIFF/TREASURE OF FEAR
US, 1945, 65 minutes, Black and white.
Jack Haley, Ann Savage, Barton Mac Lane, Veda Ann Borg.
Directed by Frank Mc Donald.
In 1944, Jack Haley had been directed by Frank Mc Donald in One Body Too Many. As with the previous film, there is a mixture of crime and murder with some rather slapstick comedy.
In this film, Jack Haley is even slower-witted than he was in the previous film. He is trying to be a newspaper reporter, supported by the editor whose nephew he is. He always misses the key story. The thing that he is good at is chess and this is drawn on throughout the film.
He is given ultimatum, a last case, going to a Grape and Wine Festival and interviewing the winner of the beauty contest. Everything goes wrong.
Infatuated with a young woman who owns an antique shop, they find themselves on the bus, but he has bought a ticket to Grape Centre rather than Grape City. He has his chessboard with him to the amusement of many of the passengers. There is also an ultra-precocious boy, interested in crime psychology, travelling with a Professor. There is a man asleep next to him who keeps putting his hand on one of the chess pieces – but, while they are going through a tunnel, he is stabbed to death. Our hero does not realise this and it is only later when the bus driver discovers the body that the driver returns to the hotel and Grape Centre and the shenanigans begin.
There are sinister people running the hotel. There is also a minder for the young boy and for the Professor. The newspaper man, his would-be girlfriend, and a rather brassy woman allegedly interested in chess, all book into the hotel.
Eventually, the police arrive, interrogations go on – but our hero is determined to get to the Festival and tries all means of escape. It emerges that the girl is trying to get a collection of jewelled chess pieces and that the other woman is, in fact, a detective. There are also twin brothers in the hotel, who haven’t spoken to one another for years, also interested in chess.
There are cellars, revolving doors, people being hit on the head, murders. There is also the announcement of an arch criminal released from jail. He turns up at the hotel, has an associate there, in order to get the jewelled chess pieces.
One of the bits of comedy is that they have to crossover a wine vat and most of them fall in, especially the professor accompanying the little boy (who is given a politically incorrect now spanking by our hero), who turns out to be the villain.
The final comedy is that the hero rings in to say that he missed the Festival and then offhandedly recites all that happened in the hotel including his capturing the criminal. He doesn’t realise what a story he has scooped!
