One Body Too Many (1944)

Starring Jack Haley, Jean Parker, Bela Lugosi, Blanche Yurka, Lyle Talbot
Directed by Frank McDonald
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

An insurance salesman calls on a millionaire with dreams of selling him a policy, only to find him deceased and his heirs scheming to abduct his body to get a better inheritance.

I enjoyed this mystery-comedy with plenty of "Old Dark House" elements, from secret passages to a mysterious murderer among the heirs to a storm that strands the participants in the spooky mansion.  Haley offers a fine comic lead performance, Parker is appealing as the noblest of the heirs, and Lugosi is well-cast as the sinister butler who may or may not be trying to poison the coffee he serves to the mansion's guests.  However, I've never been able to find a copy of this film in an acceptable print, so the image on the DVD I viewed is very murky with many dark scenes hard to view, and inexplicable bright triangle shapes that pop up on screen at regular intervals.  I hope to see a more pristine version of the film someday, but still find it worthwhile.

Cry Of The Werewolf (1944)

Starring Nina Foch, Stephen Crane, Osa Massen, Blanche Yurka, Barton MacLane
Directed by Henry Levin
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A scientist studying the creatures of legend founds a museum in the former home of a female werewolf, and when he seeks to publish her secrets, enrages her daughter, who shares her mother's curse. 

One of Columbia Pictures' rare excursions into horror in the 1940s, this is a small-scale low budget piece, getting around the cost of a werewolf makeup by portraying the creature as an actual wolf.  While that choice is unfortunate, it's still a worthwhile film with Foch making a compelling villainess, MacLane entertaining as a glib police detective, and atmospheric music, some of which was borrowed from the previous year's The Return Of The Vampire. That film and this one make an interesting double feature, with Foch featured in both, and scripts from Griffin Jay, who wrote a number of the Mummy films for Universal Pictures.