The House of Fear

Theatre actor John Woodford (Donald Douglas) dies suddenly while on stage, and his body mysteriously goes missing shortly thereafter. The actor's ghost is rumoured to haunt the theatre, and the place closes down.

To try and solve the mystery, police detective McHugh (William Gargan) poses as a producer who wants to reopen the theatre, putting on Woodford's last play, 'Dangerous Currents', with the same cast members.

Mysterious notes, purportedly written by Woodford, warn the cast not to go ahead with the play, and leading man Carleton (Walter Woolf King) is found dead. The play goes ahead, however, McHugh determined to catch the killer.

A creaky whodunit with plenty of suspects, The House of Fear is like a live-action Scooby Doo episode, with the detective discovering clues along the way that help him to solve the crime. And like a Scooby Doo episode, any seemingly supernatural occurrences are explained away, with the villain chased, caught and unmasked in the final act, an outpouring of convoluted exposition explaining their motive and modus operandi.

It's all a bit too talky to be wholly entertaining, but at just over an hour, the pace is fairly brisk and there are some fun performances (Dorothy Arnold is great as gold-digger actress Gloria DeVere), although the obligatory comic relief -- El Brendel as stagehand Jeff -- is thoroughly irritating.