A crime comedy about a chess-deck and chessmen, rather modest as script and performance, TREASURE OF FEAR, with Jack Haley and Ann Savage, directed by Frank McDonald, has too many small ideas to assemble them into a story. A journalist's trip, a romance on the road, the quest for Marco Pollo's chess-deck and the hunt for a murderer are mixed in a story with mysterious, intriguing characters, in an unsatisfying and approximative way. The treatment is light and amusing, but also banal and clumsy. And it ain't too intelligent, either. The performances seem trite, but then the roles were badly written to begin with.
A funny, more or less dysfunctional journalist is sent to write an article; he takes the GREYHOUND, stumbles into a murder case and is also co-opted into hiding an old chess-deck. He meets various inscrutable characters—oldsters, a couple of broads, an annoying kid. Too bad a possibly funny subject isn't well handled. The script is weak.
So, perhaps this ain't the definitive Marco Pollo chess-deck comedy. It lacks that lively charm which proves that a mind contributed.
For ambitious screenwriters, that's a challenge—to write the definitive Marco Pollo's chess-deck comedy.
A funny, more or less dysfunctional journalist is sent to write an article; he takes the GREYHOUND, stumbles into a murder case and is also co-opted into hiding an old chess-deck. He meets various inscrutable characters—oldsters, a couple of broads, an annoying kid. Too bad a possibly funny subject isn't well handled. The script is weak.
So, perhaps this ain't the definitive Marco Pollo chess-deck comedy. It lacks that lively charm which proves that a mind contributed.
For ambitious screenwriters, that's a challenge—to write the definitive Marco Pollo's chess-deck comedy.