Sat 2 May 2020
ONE BODY TOO MANY. Paramount Pictures, 1944. Jack Haley, Jean Parker, Bela Lugosi, Blanche Yurka, Lyle Talbot, Douglas Fowley. Director: Frank McDonald.
There’s no way of getting around it. One Body Too Many owes more than a lot to The Cat and the Canary, the movie with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard that came along five years earlier. Not that that’s a bad thing, but any movie reviewer worth his salt has to point out things like this.
In this one leading actor Jack Haley plays an insurance salesman who finally has an appointment with a wealthy recluse to sell him a $200,00 life insurance policy. Little does he know that by the time he gets there, the man is dead and his relatives, almost all of whom he had despised in his lifetime, have gathered around to hear the reading of his will.
All they get, however, is a preliminary statement from the lawyer, which in essence says that if he is buried above ground, the estate is divided one way, but if he is buried under ground, the bequests will be distributed in the reverse order. (Don’t ask.) More, all the relatives are required to stay in the house together until such time as the burial occurs.
When he arrives, Haley is mistaken for the PI the attorney has hired the watch the body, the PI having been met and disposed of just as he arrived. This causes a lot of happy confusion, as you might expect, before that particular matter is all straightened out. In the meantime, Haley and Jean Parker, the dead man’s favorite niece, have become attracted to each other, and he decides to stick around to give her what assistance he can.
There are lots of hidden passages, sliding panels, trap doors, and eyes that watch rooms through the eyes of paintings on the wall, not to mention a sudden thunderstorm and lights that go on and off. The body itself seems to come and go at will, and the butler, superbly played by Bela Lugosi, acts even more suspicious than the other relatives, a greedy lot all.
Jack Haley, I think, was underrated as a comedian, probably because he never goes as over the top as a Bob Hope, say, or heaven forbid, at least as far as this film is concerned, a Red Skelton. Haley is far more subtle here than either of those gentlemen, and he’s a huge factor in making the movie as much of a success as it is, if this is the kind of movie you like as much as I do. That said, at 75 minutes, it runs maybe 15 minutes too long. If it had been up to me, although I was only two at the time, I’d have trimmed the scene in which the coffin, with Haley inside, was tossed in the pool. Your opinion may vary.
May 2nd, 2020 at 10:30 pm
In any case a mostly fun entry in the Old Dark House school. The basic story was used in a variety of films through the sixties and seventies before the old Dark House became a cabin in the woods filled with horny teens destined to die.
I just watched WHAT A CARVE UP (Syd James, Kenneth Connor) a remake of THE CHOUL with virtually the exact same story with Donald Pleasance the solicitor.
May 3rd, 2020 at 12:31 am
I see WHAT A CARVE UP can be watched on Amazon Prime Video for a rental fee of $1.99. This is OK, as far as it goes, but with so many things to watch there for “free,” another $1.99 is just that, another $1.99. Pretty soon it starts to add up.
What version of THE GHOUL is CARVE UP a remake of? The one back in 1933 or so?
May 3rd, 2020 at 2:54 am
The 1933 Karloff one (also with Sir Cedric Hardwicke) based on the novel by Frank King (the Dormouse books) a British doctor whose novel became the first British horror film. Not much resemblence between the two really or the later GHOUL, which I think was also loosely based on the King book.
The only real tie is who the bad guy turns out to be in the Karloff and this one.
Incidentally that should be Sid not Syd James.
CARVE UP was free with Amazon Prime, but may be off now. Shirley Eaton and Dennis Price are also in it.
May 3rd, 2020 at 7:04 am
Since nobody else mentioned it:
This was a Pine-Thomas Production, from Paramount’s ‘B’ unit.
William Pine and William Thomas – the “Dollar Bills” – had one of the most efficient program picture operations among Hollywood’s major studios.
Paramount kept them going for years, and were rewarded with some pretty good second features, like this one.
Side Note: the next year (1945), the Dollar Bills reteamed Jack Haley and Frank McDonald for Scared Stiff – not a sequel, but along the same lines; I don’t know offhand if they went any farther, but there seems to have been a plan …