One Body Too Many

One Body Too Many is a production from Pine-Thomas Paramount B picture unit and after seeing it I'm convinced it was a script and story that was meant for Bob Hope. But old ski nose either rejected this one or was out entertaining the troops during the second World War. So Paramount gave the project to its B unit and got Jack Haley to play the lead.

Pine-Thomas assembled a nice cast in a project that was unusual for them, normally they did economical action/adventure stories. This is a comedy involving a late millionaire who was a firm believer in astrology, so much so that he requested to be buried in a glass covered mausoleum like Lenin at the Kremlin so that he would be always under the stars at night. After that the living relatives of whom he didn't have too good an opinion of would split up the estate. Until then they had to live at his house until the burial was done.

Poor Haley plays the Bob Hope like schnook who is an insurance salesman and keeps an appointment that he made with the old guy before he passed away. Haley arrives just in time for the reading of the will and the lawyer for the estate thinks he's a bodyguard he hired. Never mind Jack takes the job and the fun starts. If you think a couple of murders that follow is fun.

Also in the cast are Bela Lugosi and Blanche Yurka who are the butler and maid. I wish the film had a lot more of them. They look and act so sinister with some lovely eye twinkles. Lugosi had a nice gift for comedy that was too rarely seen on film.

The lovely cast of relatives of whom one is a murderer include Lyle Talbot, Jean Parker, Maxine Fife, Lucien Littlefield, Douglas Fowley and Dorothy Granger. Now who do you think is our killer in the cast?

One Body Too Many has some funny moments, but a lot of it is a rehash of material from better films.

So do you think Hope was busy with the USO or did he pass on this one?

I've always liked those 1940s comedies where a bunch of people are stuck in a house on a stormy night. I don't consider this an especially good example of this sub-genre. Part of that is just personal preferences; I prefer the snappy wise guy to the jittery nebbish, the role played by Haley. Part of it is probably that I've seen so many of this that I'm pickier than I used to be. But mainly I just don't find this movie that funny. There is a cute running joke involving coffee, but outside of that this struggles just to be mildly amusing.

The film is also just poorly filmed. It may in part be a bad print, but much of it is so dark that you can't really tell what's going on. The movie also has the most convoluted premise of any of these movies, although that didn't really affect my enjoyment of it.

One Body Too Many is just quirky enough to be humourous and something a little different than the typical monster/mystery movie fare of the 1940s. Great? No way, but surprisingly very pleasant. Jack Haley plays an insurance man named Tuttle who comes upon a household seething with greed for the remains of the recently deceased Uncle Cyrus. What follows is the standard Haunted House genre stuff: creaky doors, numerous red herrings, endless secret passages, and a heroine in love with the newcomer. Okay, we saw this in The Cat and the Canary and The Bat and a whole slew of like films. One Body Too Many has some very clever moments though that make it enjoyable. Jack Haley is a funny man. He is just too off-key as a comedian to be very funny without seeming desperate for laughs. The scene with him in the coffin submerged in the pool was just one of his very clever efforts(as well as a nicely filmed sequence). Most people even attempting to see this film - myself included - will do so because Bela Lugosi is in it. The Lugosi completist will watch it, and I think appreciate it far more than some other Bela efforts(Scared to Death comes to mind rather quickly!). Lugosi doesn't have a large part, but he is in the picture throughout and has some very subtle comedic moments. He plays a butler along with maid Blanche Yurka(who could forget her Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities?)who are always trying to get the sequestered suspects some coffee...maybe it is poisoned, maybe not. Some other inventive sequences include the finale with a telescope and Jack Haley with a hamper. A nice film done in a way that unfortunately is long gone.

Jack Haley (Wizard of Oz's Tin Man) and Bela Lugosi star in this horror-suspense-comedy. Although calling it horror is like calling Pauly Shore comedy.

A man dies and leaves a very strange will: if his body is buried underground, the order of the inheritances will be reversed so the person with the smallest share receives the largest and so on. Jack Haley shows up as an insurance salesman, but ends up becoming a detective to see who is trying to steal the body and bury it prematurely. Since no one knows what inheritance they're getting, it could be anyone.

Highlight of the movie is by far Bela Lugosi as the butler. He tries numerous times to serve the guests coffee which may or may not be laced with rat poison. (The ambiguity is seemingly cleared up at the end of the film, though I cannot say even I know for sure.) Other commentators have said the film was shot in poor lighting. They're right, but I didn't really have a problem with it. I never was confused about what was happening or where anyone was on the screen. And filming this movie in color probably (though who can say for sure?) would have detracted from its character.

A problem I did have - not related to the lighting - was trying to figure out who everyone was. Maybe I was not paying attention or maybe the plot is weak, but many characters don't have memorable names or associations with each other. This left me confused about who was who at certain key moments. I'm still not clear on who the actual villain is (although a second viewing would probably clear this up).

I laughed, I was suspended, and I laughed some more. Really great film by the standards of the time and worth watching today.

The other reviewers here weren't too impressed by this, but I must admit to laughing practically all the way through. This film is very much a second-rate retread of the classic Cat & The Canary, with Jack Haley doing the Bob Hope schtick, yet it is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. Haley is a very entertaining & likable 'hero' and is well served by the witty script, which is brimming with snappy one-liners. Lugosi, whose performance will undoubtedly be the biggest draw for modern audiences, proves surprisingly adept at comedy; as the suspicious butler, he has a lot of fun sending up his image. I particularly liked the running joke involving the coffee that may or may not be laced with rat poison; by the end of the film, Lugosi's catchphrase line 'Anybody Want A Cup Of Coffee?' has become hilarious through repetition, especially since the dubious-looking coffee is always refused by everyone. I particularly enjoyed the following exchange (my wording) :

LUGOSI: "Would you like a cup of coffee?" HALEY: "Depends. There are two types of coffee, percolated or drip. What type have you got?" LUGOSI: "It is the percolated kind." HALEY: "No thanks, I'm a drip."

OK, maybe you had to be there.

Although the mystery & the comedy elements are not up to the standard of the 1939 Cat & The Canary, this is still a superior spooky-house thriller. The ne'er do well relatives waiting for their piece of the estate are a splendidly hateful bunch; the sequence in which Lyle Talbot's lawyer reads out the late millionaires' comments about each of his relatives sets up their characters beautifully. Talbot, of course, stops short of reading out the old man's comments about him ("I would trust him as far as I could throw...an elephant").

In short, I would recommend this to fans of old-fashioned spooky house thrillers & fans of Lugosi who'd like to see him trying his hand at playing for (intentional) laughs. It's streets ahead of most of his poverty row 1940s output, which is for the most part utterly dire, and I was surprised at how often I laughed out loud. I'm going to be very generous with this, as it made me laugh more than any other film I've seen recently, including a lot of modern comedies.

8/10