Horror Classic 7 of 50: ONE BODY TOO MANY

When you hear the phrase "classic horror," who's the first actor that comes to your mind? Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it's not Jack Haley, best known as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. So I was surprised to see that he has the lead role in this week's movie, One Body Too Many from 1944.

As it turns out, this film isn't really a horror movie at all. It's more of a comic mystery, like something you would expect to see in community theater or dinner theater. But the people who made the 50 Movie Pack threw it in because a) it includes a big, dark house and a dead body and a thunderstorm, and b) they didn't have enough films to produce a 50 Movie Pack: Comic Mysteries Like Something You Would Expect to See in Community Theater or Dinner Theater.

Oh, and Bela Lugosi's in this one too, as you can see from the poster there. That's three films in a row to feature his special brand of spookiness, which is fine with me, although I'm hoping I get some Boris Karloff and maybe some Lon Chaney Jr. later in the DVD set.

Synopsis
The first character we meet is Albert Tuttle (Jack Haley), a mild mannered life insurance agent. He's very excited because today is the day he's going to the home of Cyrus J. Rutherford, a local millionaire, for an appointment they made months ago. But in the next scene, we learn something Albert doesn't know: Rutherford isn't really in the market for life insurance because he is, in fact, dead. His body is awaiting burial at his house, where his relatives have all gathered, along with his lawyer and his two servants, for the reading of the will.

Ah, but there's a catch: Rutherford doesn't want to be interred underground, he wants to be placed in an aboveground glass dome so he can spend eternity under the stars. Until this dome is constructed, the who-gets-what portion of the will cannot be read. And if any of the heirs leave the house before this happens, the distribution will be reversed: those set to receive a little will get a lot, and vice versa. That makes sense, right?

Gelman the lawyer calls a detective agency to hire a man to guard the body. He's worried, you see, that some of the lesser-loved relatives might try to botch things up so that they'll up with more of Rutherford's fortune than they're entitled to. So when the affable but timid Albert Tuttle shows up for his appointment with Rutherford, everyone initially assumes he's the detective, and there's some funny Three's Company-style miscommunication. When the truth comes out, Albert's ready to get the heck out of there, but Rutherford's sweet and lovely niece Carol convinces him to stay and guard the body anyway. That makes sense, right?

See, Carol has received a threatening note, and there's even been an attempt on her life. Which means there's a murderer in the house! Is it Rutherford's friend Professor Hilton, a twitchy, nervous man who spends a lot of time in the telescope tower -- the same telescope tower from whence somebody tries to drop a huge stone on Carol? Is it Rutherford's stern, cold sister Estelle? For once, the killer is actually not Bela Lugosi, who appears in a small role here as Marco the butler, although his innocence is not for lack of trying (more on that later). And it can't be Gelman, because he's found hanging in a closet, which up the stakes a bit.

Tuttle stumbles his way through the film, ever the reluctant hero. He hides in the coffin, he's terrorized by goldfish, he wanders through secret passageways, and at one point he ends up naked, stuck in a laundry basket with a cat. In the end, the killer's identity is revealed and everyone lives happily ever after, except for a few people who got killed.

Is It Scary?
As I discussed above, it's really not supposed to be much of a thriller. When Gelman's body was discovered, it almost seemed like the director deliberately filmed it in the least shocking way possible. That said, the sequence of Tuttle trapped in the coffin underwater was pretty tense, and I got a chill from a later scene involving a precariously wavering ladder, but I just have a thing about ladders.

Lessons I Learned

• Life insurance salesmen lead dangerous lives.

• If Bela Lugosi offers you coffee, don't take it.

• The well-prepared murderer should know exactly where the trap door is.

Comments
I couldn't tell most of the Rutherford relatives apart. The movie would have been better, and funnier, if each of them had at least one defining quirk.

My roommate Joe was watching this one with me, and he correctly pointed out that Albert Tuttle is the perfect name for a mild-mannered life insurance salesman character. I also think "Cyrus J. Rutherford" is a great moniker for a millionaire.

Jack Haley was pretty funny and quite likable. I'd never seen him in anything other than The Wizard of Oz, where he was heavily costumed and made up, so it was interesting to occasionally spot mannerisms recognizable from his Tin Man performance.

There are a lot of scenes in this movie where something happens unexpectedly, and the whole cast quickly gathers in a room.

When speculating about this movie in my last entry, I wondered exactly how many bodies is one body too many. Although there are multiple bodies by the end of the film, I feel pretty confident in announcing that the answer is one.

Perhaps the funniest part of the film was a running gag involving the two servants, Marco and Matthews. Early in the film, they decide to kill Rutherford's relatives in order to increase their own chances of getting a big chunk of change in the will. So they mix some rat poison into some coffee, and offer it to everyone over the course of the film... but no one's ever in the mood for coffee. In the film's final moments they end up drinking it themselves.

Letter grade for One Body Too Many: B-

Next movie in the DVD set: White Zombie