This movie is sort of like Weekend at Bernie’s, if the object in that film had been to keep Bernie’s body hidden and constantly on the move so no one could find it.
J. Edward Bromberg, a hard-working character actor, gets a rare chance to star in a film. He plays an upstanding newspaper publisher named Henry Kruger who threatens rival publisher Andy McDonald (played by Paul Guilfoyle) after McDonald splashes a tawdry story about Kruger’s daughter all over the front page of his daily paper. McDonald turns out to also be a blackmail magnate, and when one of his victims rubs him out, his body winds up in the trunk of Kruger’s car. Most of the film involves the increasingly perplexed Kruger’s attempts to deep-six the body so he won’t be accused of a crime he didn’t commit. The only problem is, the body won’t stay in one place for very long. Who’s moving it? And why?
The Missing Corpse is a fun mix of comedy and suspense. Like most of the output from P.R.C., it’s a quick, low-budget diversion, and little more, but it’s still a light-hearted and fun hour and one minute. As far as MacGuffins go, a dead body is a pretty good one, and P.R.C. certainly released worse films into theaters in the ’40s.
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