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.
Review of One Body Too Many
