"One Body Too Many" might best be described as a suspenseful comedy. I wasn’t expecting the humor so as the movie began showing its lighter side I settled in for an hour of groans and boredom. I ended up enjoying the production a great deal.

 

Tuttle, an insurance agent, travels to a house to sell an insurance policy to a man who turns out to have died a little too soon. This eccentric man had wanted his family to spend a few days together in his mansion. He didn’t like most of them, and they don’t like each other. Tuttle arrives to find a house full of people who mistake him for a detective not realizing that the real officer is actually missing. Tuttle is a timid man, but the pretty young girl in the family needs his help so he sticks around and becomes something of a bumbling gumshoe after all.

 

There’s a decent, though not great, murder mystery here with some dark intrigue setting the foundation of the mood. That is offset by comedy that is sometimes ironic and sometimes silly. There are a few jokes that don’t work too well, but I laughed a lot throughout the majority of the movie once I had settled into the idea that this was going to be something humorous – intentionally humorous, that is.

 

Jack Haley plays the lead role. He comes across as likable, but more than that he’s someone that an average kind of person could relate to. If you were nearly killed after being mistaken for someone you weren’t how would you respond? You’d probably want out of there! But what if someone, a stranger, needed your help? I know I’d be torn between self-preservation and the desire to help much like Tuttle is. Relating to the character helped draw me into the story.

 

The big draw for many people including me would be the name of Bela Lugosi. Don’t let the advertising fool you; he is not the star. In fact, his role is pretty small, not cameo small, but minor just the same. What’s fun about him is that this is the only time I’ve seen him do comedy. The novelty of that alone ought to make this a movie worth seeing for Lugosi fans.

 

He plays a butler who shows up every so often offering coffee that may or may not be laced with rat poison. It becomes a running gag that I found amusing especially in light of the payoff at the end. Most of the other acting is good also although nobody stands out as much as Haley. That helps the selling of the story.

 

What's catchy about this comedy is that it has a better dark atmosphere than many full-on horror movies. That is, of course, balanced with the humor, and the compliment of the two makes them both stronger.

 

Its one downfall is that it gets long. Some scenes feel rehashed and unnecessary. It had me laughing enough to overlook those moments so that I could enjoy the production as a whole. A tighter pace would have been beneficial just the same.