the leading man is my tpye

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

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.

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.

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.

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.