Over My Dead Body

Milton Berle is a mystery writer. His novels are so good that even he can't figur out who dunnit. This irritates when Mary Beth Hughes. But when One of her bosses commits suicide because the other three partners have made crooked investments, Berle realizes this is the plot of one of his novels. Like the novel, he offers to be accused of murder for $15,000. This will let the partners collect insurance on the dead man and make good the losses before their books can be examined. Except Berle finds himself confounded. He doesn't know what really happened, and faces the electric chair as a result.

Berle gives a fast-talking, Bob Hope sort of performance here, except there's no lasciviousness. By about the half-way mark, the mystery side of the story overwhelms the comedy. With Reginald Denny, Wonderful Smith -- yes, there is a performer by that name -- J. Pat O'Malley, Milton Parsons, John Hamilton, and Sig Arno.

Whether you enjoy this comic mystery depends on your sense of humor. Although it didn't make me laugh out loud I was amused by Jason Cordry's writing predicament. He was full of situation ideas but he just couldn't resolve his own mystery novel plots. And I loved his menagerie of animals.

We are led into an improbable situation where Jason is acting out one of his pulp mysteries for real. His wife's boss Brenner is in a sticky situation after a man commits suicide over the scams that he and Brenner himself have been involved in. Jason finds himself hiding in Brenner's boardroom trying to do some snooping. Jason offers to get Brenner out of trouble by putting himself at risk with a very dodgy premise he has concocted in his latest attempt at a novel. I'll leave it to you how far you can go with the improbable plot but I urge you to give a try anyway.

There are two Miltons in the cast. Milton Berle with his cartoon face is Jason Cordry. Then we have one of the greatest gifts to 1940s mysteries in the person of Milton Parsons. With his skeletal appearance and precise tombstone voice you just want to savor every moment he's on the screen. He appears in Brenner's boardroom scenes and then later on in the witness stand at the trial.

Never considered a major movie star in comedies, Milton Berle nonetheless proves his mettle in this fast-paced amusing murder mystery, encompassing his talents honed in vaudeville and reaching full flower a decade later on television.

With Mary Beth Hughes playing his wife and "straight man" role, Berle bulls his way nonstop through what seems like nonsense and near double-talk but ultimately making sense as a mystery writer who unfortunately acts out his stories in real life much to the consternation of Hughes and everybody else.

Revolving around an endless stream of old jokes, vaudeville routines, silly slapstick and stolen shtick (at a couple of points Berle has the audacity to launch into vintage Abbott & Costello routines the audience will immediately recognize) is the sort of MacGuffin murder mystery complications fans of that genre love to ponder. The art here is to take something seemingly complicated and spinning out of control but make it easy for a mass movie audience to follow and be titillated by. The climax of the film even takes place in a courtroom with Berle on trial for a murder that he concocted out of one of his own cockamamie stories, in which he pulls rabbits out of a hat to solve the crime that would even make Perry Mason blush.

Modern comedies in this vein often screw up by being too clever by half, as witness the recent "Knives Out!" series. I'm thinking of one that I particularly enjoyed a generation or so ago, the Tony Perkins/Stephen Sondheim scripted (wow!!) "The Last of Sheila", way too sophisticated for its own good. With Berle's unlimited energy on display this is great fun.

Without a doubt, this is the worst movie ever made. The plot, the acting and the characters are absolutely horrible. It makes no sense. It's a disgrace. Please don't waste your time watching it. BAH.