User reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.