Artivels Undescribable Perfection

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Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

blanche-2 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.

mark.waltz 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.

gridoon2018 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.

Terrell-4 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.