I Watch Films: One Body Too Many

 

One Body Too Many

An insurance salesman arrives with an appointment to sell a $200,000 life insurance policy to reclusive millionaire Cyrus J Rutherford. Unfortunately Rutherford is dead and has an eccentric will which requires all the named legatees (mostly his horrible relatives, also his servants including butler Bela Lugosi) to remain on the property until he is interred on the roof in a crystal mausoleum. He was big on stars. Worse still, he states that some of them get big payouts, and others get less, down to one who will only get the bus fare home, and who gets what is not revealed until he is put to rest. And if he’s buried somewhere other than on the roof the order of payouts is reversed, the last becoming first.

I’m not convinced this will would hold up to challenge.

The insurance salesman is mistaken for a detective hired to guard the body (the real detective is waylaid, the first indication that someone is trying to fix things). There follow attempts to find out the list of payments, attempts to steal and bury the body and attempts to murder other people so whoever is left gets more. The insurance salesman is convinced to stay by the lawyer and also Rutherford’s beautiful niece and ends up in a variety of comical situations – in the coffin, wandering secret passages dressed only in a towel which he then loses etc. before the film stumbles to a conclusion.

Watch This: A pacy, fun comedy murder mystery
Don’t Watch This: No one has anything interesting going on and the jokes are generally overlong and dated