One Body Too Many ** (1944, Jack Haley, Bela Lugosi, Jean Parker, Blanche Yurka, Lyle Talbot, Douglas Fowley, Bernard Nedell) – Classic Movie Review 6138

‘A shudder a second! A laugh a minute! YOU’LL DIE SCREAMING WITH LAUGHTER! Bela Lugosi is a welcome presence as the butler Merkil in the 1944 comedy-mystery film One Body Too Many.

‘A shudder a second! A laugh a minute! YOU’LL DIE SCREAMING WITH…Laughter! ‘ Director Frank McDonald’s easy-going, quite tolerable 1944 comedy-mystery filler film One Body Too Many stars Jack Haley as the simple insurance seller Albert Tuttle, who arrives at a creepy mansion to sell life insurance to Cyrus J Rutherford.

However, unfortunately the millionaire is already dead. The heirs are gathered to hear the reading of the will and Albert accidentally turns detective when the millionaire’s corpse he is protecting vanishes.

Haley tends to overplay his comedy hand as performer in a tame spoof with not enough jokes or scares. Though a welcome presence, Bela Lugosi is wasted as the butler Merkil, and so is co-star Jean Parker as Carol Dunlap.

Also in the cast are Blanche Yurka, Lyle Talbot, Douglas Fowley, Bernard Nedell, Fay Helm, Lucien Littlefield, Maxine Fife and Dorothy Granger.

The original screenplay is written by Winston Miller and Maxwell Shane. The film is shot in black and white by Fred Jackman Jr (director of photography) and produced by William H Pine and William C Thomas at Pine-Thomas Productions for Paramount Pictures, and scored by Alexander Laszlo.

It was released on 24 November 1944.

it runs 75 minutes.

Paramount failed to renew the film’s copyright and it is in the public domain, so it is freely available on the Internet.

It was a change of pace for Pine-Thomas Productions, who specialised in action films but decided to move into comedy and signed Jack Haley for a series of movies, and this was the second. The producers wanted Boris Karloff but eventually Bela Lugosi was hired. It was originally known as Too Many Bodies.

The cast are Jack Haley as Albert L Tuttle, Jean Parker as Carol Dunlap, Bela Lugosi as Merkil the butler, Blanche Yurka as Matthews, Lyle Talbot as Jim Davis, Douglas Fowley as Henry Rutherford, Fay Helm as Estelle Hopkins, Bernard Nedell as Attorney Morton Gellman, Lucien Littlefield as Kenneth Hopkins, Dorothy Granger as Mona Rutherford, and Maxine Fife as Margaret Hopkins.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6138

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