A Question of Fear - Recap

A mercenary, Colonel Denny Malloy, is playing billiards at his club as Dr. Mazi, a white-haired older man, tells the other club members about the night he slept in a haunted house he purchased as part of a wager. As Mazi describes it, he blanked out and his friends found him at midnight, wandering the nearby road. Mazi’s hair had turned white, and he spent three years in an asylum receiving treatment. Malloy calls him a coward and Mazi asks if he knows fear. The mercenary says that he’s fought in dozens of wars and had men shot for cowardice, and doesn’t know fear. Mazi offers him $10,000 to spend one night in the haunted house without being frightened to death. Another club member raises the stakes to $15,000, and Malloy confidently accepts.



Mazi drops Malloy off at the house and the mercenary goes inside. The door closes and locks behind him, sealing him in, and laughter echoes through the hallways. Malloy looks around and blood drips from the ceilings, while a ghostly floating head appears and disappears behind him. The colonel makes his way to the dining room, and a table covered with rotting food. Lightning and thunder flash despite the fact that the windows are bricked over, and the ghost of a white-haired soldier appears. Malloy tries to shoot it and it disappears, but he finds drops of blood on the floor.



Malloy continues exploring and goes to the cellar. As he descends, the door locks behind him and a step breaks beneath his weight. He falls and hits his head, while laughter echoes around him. He spots a trail of slime on the floor and follows it to a small room. The soldier ghost appears again and advances toward him. Malloy shoots it without effect and it disappears. Investigating, Malloy finds more blood on the floor, as well as an extended trail of a slime-like substance.

The colonel goes back upstairs and unpacks the dinner he brought with himself. As he drinks coffee from his thermos, he hears the piano playing in the next room. Malloy goes to investigate and finds the soldier playing the piano. It turns and reaches out its hands, which burst into flame. Unimpressed, Malloy steps around it and spots an air hose on the floor. He cuts it and the soldier dummy collapses to the ground. Clearly tired, Malloy calls out that Mazi can’t scare him and that they’re wasting all the money they spent to create a haunted house just to win the bet.



Malloy goes to the bedroom and prepares to sleep. However, first he checks the bed and finds another air hose. He cuts it and gets into blade, but metal straps fasten him down and a pendulum blade descends from the top of the bed. Unimpressed, Malloy yells that if Mazi kills him, then he loses the bet because Malloy had to be frightened to death. The blade comes down to Malloy’s neck... and stops. Laughing, Malloy goes to sleep despite his predicament.



The next morning, Malloy wakes up and finds himself freed. He goes to the kitchen to have breakfast and discovers that the stove is already on. A TV monitor descends from the ceiling, and Mazi appears. He has removed the white dye from his hair, and invites Malloy to enjoy the breakfast cooking on the automated stove. Maxi explains that he drugged Malloy’s thermos of coffee the previous night while he explored the house, and that he figures that even the colonel has a breaking point. He talks about how his father, a concert pianist, served in the Italian Army and Malloy captured him while working for the other side. Malloy tortured Mazi Sr. for information by covering his hands with gasoline and setting them on fire. Mazi swore to his father that he would obtain vengeance on the man responsible. Malloy remembers the incident but dismisses it as part of war. Mazi then explains that he’s a biochemist, and that he drugged Malloy so that he could administer an injection. He tells the colonel that he’s developed a process that can turn a man’s bones into jelly while keeping him alive, and that he has given it to a colleague. The colleague is now in the cellar, transformed into a human earthworm. Malloy says that Mazi is bluffing, but the doctor tells him to go to the cellar and see what the colleague became... and what Malloy will become.

Malloy goes to the cellar door and starts to open it, but hesitates when he sees another trail of sliming running underneath it into the kitchen. He returns to the kitchen and tells Mazi that he’s lost because he failed to frighten him to death. Malloy shoots himself with his own gun and falls across the table. Mazi smiles in triumphant and says that there was nothing in the cellar.



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