Joyce Compton

Scared to Death -- From a slab in the morgue, a dead young woman tells the bizarre tale of how she got there, through a maze of murder involving a hypnotist, a midget and a mysterious figure in a blue mask.

Scared to Death -- A woman, talking from the slab at the morgue tells a story of hypnotism, murder, and mystery.

In this youth-oriented comedy Chuck and Wally are friends in their senior year of college with graduation fast approaching. A wealthy industrialist offers them jobs after graduation if they'll do him a favor and deliver a car to his daughter in Lake Tahoe. The car, a red Porsche, gets stolen for use as the prize in a beauty pageant. The lads wind up in San Diego attempting to recover the car and preserve their future careers.

Ex-Golden Gloves fighter Danny Kenny has it all worked out. He'll turn pro to bankroll his brother's dream of writing a symphonic paean to the teeming city where they both live: New York. But life pulls the sidewalk out from under Danny when he's blinded during a brutal 15-round welterweight title bout. James Cagney plays Danny in this heart-tugging melodrama co-starring Ann Sheridan, Anthony Quinn, film-debuting Arthur Kennedy and in a rare acting turn before becoming a director, Elia Kazan. Among familiar studio players, there's an unbilled one: a vivid backlot and rear-screen Manhattan. "Sometimes we wonder," The New York Times' Bosley Crowther wrote, "whether it wasn't really the Warner brothers who got New York from the Indians, so diligent and devoted have they been in feeling the great city's pulse."