JohnHowardReid Producers: Bill Pine, Bill Thomas. A Pine-Thomas Production, filmed at Fine Arts Studios, for Paramount release. Copyright 17 October 1944 by Paramount Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Rialto: 24 November 1944. U.S. release: Not recorded. Australian release: 28 June 1945. 6,840 feet. 75 minutes. SYNOPSIS: An insurance salesman gets himself waylaid as a bodyguard (literally!) in a spooky old house filled with expectant heirs.COMMENT: From The Old Dark House to One Body Too Many is neither a great jump in story or characters. Once again the setting is the spooky, many-roomed mansion of an eccentric millionaire type and once again the plot contrives to fill the place with a whole gallery of fascinating people. Where the two films part company lies in the degree to which they command an audience's attention. Although One Body actually runs only four minutes more than Old Dark House, it still seems about twenty minutes too long. The main problem is that Jack Haley is no Bob Hope. Following Hope's successes in The Cat and the Canary (1939) and The Ghost Breakers (1940), this role was obviously crafted with the ski-nosed comedian firmly in mind, but Haley just can't quite bring it off. Furthermore, Frank Blondie McDonald's direction is somewhat on the slow and heavy-handed side, lacking the skill and polish that a Sidney Lanfield or George Marshall would have brought to the production. So what we actually have here is an imitation Bob Hope vehicle made by a second-string unit with a second-string cast. Second-string? So what's Lugosi doing in the movie? At this stage of his career, he was already acting along Poverty Row. If anything, One Body Too Many represented a distinct step up the ladder. Mind you, the role is nothing more than window-dressing or, put another way, a red herring. Nonetheless, Bela gives it a good shot. Partnered by Blanche A Tale of Two Cities Yurka of all people, he is certainly mildly amusing. The rest of the players are okay so far as they go. But shrill-voiced Jean Parker is no Dorothy Lamour, nor heavy-on-the-bluster Douglas Fowley a budding Claude Rains. Our chief problem, however, is Jack Haley. He simply tries too hard to impersonate Hope, yet not nearly hard enough to develop his own character. By the humble standards of Pine-Thomas, production values are pretty good with fine moody photography by the junior Jackman and reasonably spooky sets by F. Paul Sylos.

bkoganbing 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?

Scarecrow-88 "Leave this house at once if you value your life."Insurance agent, Tuttle, is to sit with the body of a wealthy millionaire while his greedy ancestors await their inheritance from his will. The relatives must stay three days in their wealthy benefactor's mansion or else be disinherited. The contents of the will are not to be read until after the three days are concluded. If the corpse of Cyrus Rutherford is moved, put away successfully, the will be reversed and those who were to get much will get little and vice versa. Rutherford was big on astrology, the stars, and his casket was open-faced with glass so "the stars could shine upon him". Bela Lugosi gets top billing, but he's basically a butler always trying to get the guests of the mansion to drink his coffee(the question is whether or not his coffee is poisoned as he too stands to inherit an allowance for his services to his recently deceased employer). It's actually Jack Haley's movie, as he's a comic foil, bumbling around the mansion, getting himself in trouble unintentionally. The mansion has dead bodies turning up(such as Cyrus' lawyer), secret passageways(Tuttle, in a towel as he was about to bathe, gets lost in the house after walking into one of them located in his closet), and trap doors(the killer uses one to send pursuers after him into the kitchen). Jean Parker is Carol Dunlap, one who stands to inherit if she can stay alive, also Haley's love interest. Played entirely as a comedy with Haley the center of activity, although his Tuttle just wanted to sell Cyrus some insurance.

mark.waltz It's the usual reading of the will old dark house movie, done during the silent era ("The Cat and the Canary"), the golden age of movie horror ("The Old Dark House"), and remade many times. (In fact, both titles were remakes). The story is always the same---an elderly person either is dying, or has died, and the greedy relatives await the reading of the will. Some die, some are red herrings, and always, the killer is never a surprise. Of course, with the 1927 "Cat and the Canary" and 1932's "The Old Dark House", the atmosphere was so chilling that the repetition of the plot didn't matter. Here, for this Pine-Thomas quickie, Jack Haley is the insurance salesman sent for by the deceased to sell him insurance, and he arrives to find out it is too late. But the usual assortment of relatives are present, including one who is genuinely good (heroine Jean Parker). With Bela Lugosi and Blanche Yurke as the spooky servants, coffee is always ready to be served, and the question is, is it laced with rat poison? That's a standing joke that unfortunately doesn't come off as very funny. Poor Blanche Yurka, excellent as Madame De Farge in "A Tale of Two Cities", and equally as nefarious as any of Lugosi's villains in "Lady For a Night", doesn't get anything resembling an acting scene. Her fabulous voice is ill-used. It's a role we've seen hundreds of times-Gale Sondergaard in 1939's "Cat and the Canary", Judith Anderson in "Rebecca", Margaret Hamilton in "The Invisible Ghost", Rafaela Ottiano in "Topper Returns", and years later, Elizabeth Lawrence as Palmer Cortlandt's spooky housekeeper on "All My Children", and Beaulah Garrick as Quentin Chamberlain's equally spooky HK on "Guiding Light". But Ms. Yurka is the most ill-used of them all, a crime considering her tremendous stage career.Lugosi plays another red-herring butler, which he did opposite the Ritz Brothers in "The Gorilla", but at least he gets more screen time than poor Ms. Yurka. The assorted relatives aren't really worth mentioning by actor's name as they run the typical assorted of greedy heirs drooling at the thought of the others demise and their inclusion as the main heir. A lawyer and "scientist of the stars" are also present, but they too, aren't very memorable. The long scene of Haley alone in the room where the coffin is makes one long for Lugosi's coffee (even if it is laced with rat poison), and an extended gag of a towel cladding Haley hiding once that towel is snagged off by a bolted door is rather unfunny. Haley underwater in the glass covered coffin, viewing the fish in the dead man's pond, is only slightly amusing. There are no real laughs to be found, but with that cast, it's at least a curiosity. Just don't expect any nice moments like Eva Moore in "The Old Dark House" telling the young women how their skin will someday rot, all the while reminding her brother, "No beds! They can't have beds!"