User Reviews

The audience knows from the start who the killer is in this above average B comedy from Producers Releasing Corporation. It is a very funny murder mystery where the neglected head of a wealthy family (character actor J. Edward Bromberg), cast against type, finds himself on the run when he discovers the corpse of enemy Paul Guilfoyle in his trunk. The audience knows that "Slippery Joe" (Ben Welden) killed Guilfoyle, and in his attempt to frame Bromberg forgot to pick up the evidence that would convict him of a crime Guilfoyle had locked in his safe but slipped into his jacket before Welden shot him. Up in the mountain inn, the body keeps disappearing, and to make things worse for Bromberg and Welden (finding out where Bromberg is thanks to a nosy convenience store clerk), Bromberg's dizzy wife (Isabel Randolph) and ungrateful children (Eric Sinclair and Lorell Sheldon) show up, only to prevent the family from becoming involved in any scandal rather than to help him get out of this jam. More mayhem has the corpse going from car trunk to crate to closet and seemingly back again, and Randolph's cute pooch becomes involved to help expose the killer.

I would have to call this perhaps PRC's very best comedy as well as one of the best comedies of 1945. It keeps you glued for its hour running time, and how can you not help think of Hitchcock's "The Trouble With Harry", made a decade later? Another comedy, "Stella" (1950, with Ann Sheridan and Victor Mature, had a similar plot). Charles Coleman is delightfully droll as the butler. A funny bit of character development as Bromberg basically the forgotten man in his own family even though it is he who brings home the bacon. At the end, the family is grateful and apologetic to Bromberg, but a funny twist at the end is well staged. PRC did a great job of making us believe this family was that daffy and wealthy (very much out of the "My Man Godfrey" school of screwball comedy), and the sets for both the family mansion and mountain inn are very well designed. Bromberg, best known for playing hard characters and villains, turns a complete 180 degrees, playing the type of part that Lloyd Corrigan had always been typecast in, and steals the nose right out from everybody, including that missing corpse and the cute pup.

Publisher who's family pays him no mind decides to run off on them and his paper on the spur of the moment and go hunting with his Man Friday. What he doesn't know is that a rival publisher, who has been trying to embarrass him, has been killed and his body placed in the trunk of his car. Upon arriving at his his country home Our hero discovers the body about the time the police come to call which then begins a game of hide the body as more and more people try to cover up the crime. Amusing comedy mystery moves along at just the right speed so that things keep moving and we never lose interest. Of course, as a police officer remarks toward the end had the police been called none of this would have had to happen but then there would never have been a movie. High art its not, mildly amusing it is. An amusing time passer thats worth a look if you run across it.

THE MISSING CORPSE is an entry in an unusual sub-genre, that of the murder mystery comedy. A man with a hundred enemies is murdered and his body ends up in a trunk, which then keeps turning up in unexpected places. A bumbling cast of idiotic characters then accuse each other as they bid to find out who committed the crime. Goofy dialogue is the order of the day here, but the whole thing is more irritating than amusing; for a similar, classier attempt at the same genre, check out Hitch's THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY.