It was a dark and comical night... this movie turned out to be a very pleasant surprise! I knew it was a comedy-horror but it was funnier than I expected. This flick is worth watching if you like old school comedy films. I have to say this movie is underrated!! The movie has all the ingredients for a good old fashioned comedy-horror: we have a dead man, a will, greedy & goofy inheritors, a murderer on the loose, a big spooky mansion, secret passages, a stormy night, Bela Lugosi & COFFEE.I think the best parts of the film were: the insurance man in a towel in the secret passageway, the wicker basket, the coffin in the water and COFFEE! LOL. You will have to watch the film to get the scenes I am referring to. COFFEE is peppered throughout the entire film! This is a great afternoon film and would make a great double feature with a film like: The Comedy of Terrors (1963). I highly recommend skipping the COFFEE while watching these films. ;) 9/10

Another winner here from Bela Lugosi, although to be fair he's more of a supporting character here. The film's main protagonist is the who plays hapless life insurance salesman Albert Tuttle, unwittingly drawn into a game of intrigue involving loads of benefactors awaiting the outcome of the will of some rich guy.This rich guy was well into astronomy, and wants to be buried in a glass casket so the stars can shine on him. However, it's stated in his will somewhere that if he gets buried underground, then his will is reversed, and those due very little will get the most. Tuttle doesn't even know the guy is dead, and at first is mistaken for a private detective hired to guard the body (and both the detective and the corpse have gone walkies).Tuttle teams up with the innocent granddaughter of the dead guy to find out who keeps moving the body, and killing off the benefactors. So you've got this Tuttle guy being bopped on the head, buried in a coffin, finding secret passageways, and being harassed for coffee by Bela, who plays the mysterious butler.It's a good laugh all the way as this Tuttle guy gets put through the grinder at every opportunity, having to run around naked to avoid the benefactors, being stalked by someone with a poker, and various other farces. Yep, this film is mainly a comedy with a killer, and who doesn't love a film set in a house with secret passageways. Bela doesn't have too much to do here, but between himself and the guy who played Tuttle (Jack Avery?) One Body Too Many is a good laugh with very few slow spots.

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!"

One Body Too Many is a fairly enjoyable The Cat and the Canary style film. It's not great, but it's certainly not the worst piece of trash to come down the pike. As I alluded, those familiar with The Cat and the Canary aren't going to find the plot groundbreaking with its originality – an old dark house with secret passages, greedy family members gathered for the reading of the will of an eccentric and rich patriarch, the will includes all sorts of unusual stipulations, and at least one person in the party proves to be a killer and begins bumping off other family members. It's nothing new. This basic plot structure was fairly common in the 40s and One Body Too Many is a typical example.As I've learned to expect from a comedy/horror/mystery/thriller from the 40s, some of the movie will work and some won't. Going in, I always hope that what works is more than what doesn't work. One of the things that worked well for me in One Body Too Many was Bela Lugosi. Playing what is essentially the supporting role of butler, Lugosi steals scene after scene. The running gag involving Lugosi and the coffee is very nearly laugh-out-loud funny. Jack Haley (who generally gets on my nerves) also has his moments that really work. He has at least one scene where he ends up naked in a clothes hamper that I found hysterical. But even with these great moments, overall the good and the bad in One Body Too Many pretty much balanced out, resulting in what I'll call an average way to spend 75 minutes.