One Body Too Many

In typical dead millionaire fashion, a group of his grasping would-be heirs turn up at his mansion eager to find out what they have been left. "Rutherford" is going to make them wait, though, until he has been interred in a glass-topped vault so his spirit can see the sky - and that's going to mean they have to stay for the weekend under the care of genial butler "Merkil" (Bela Lugosi) and his sidekick "Matthews" (Blanche Yurka). The group are terrified that something might happen to the corpse before the will can be read, so they hire a man to come and supervise it overnight. Coincidentally, "Tuttle" (Jack Haley) arrives at that very house and they assume he is the body watcher. Nope! He's an insurance man who had an appointment with the deceased but he decides he might as well stay and get paid to keep an eye on things instead. How hard could it be? What now ensues is your standard scary house thriller with plenty of creaking stairwells, secret passages and red herrings, all lorded over by a Lugosi who quite skilfully plays a more mischievous second fiddle to an Haley that I thought was trying a little too hard. There's far too much dialogue and the constant need to deliver some sort of gag gets in the way of any intrigue that Lugosi and the also on form Yurka try to concoct with their "special" coffee antics, and by half way through I felt that "Rutherford" might have had the right idea and stayed in his coffin. It does have it's moments and to be fair we are kept guessing well until the denouement, but the comedy missed more than it hit for me. Still, it's an amiable enough afternoon feature that does what is says on the can.