Arsenic and Old Lace is a farce directed by Frank Capra with an underlying dark comedy. It does feature a tad too much mugging to the camera and its theatrical roots are hard to hide.
Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is a famous drama critic known for his anti marriage stance. Which explains why he is trying to get a marriage licence incognito. He is getting married to the girl next door, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane.)
Before he goes off to Niagara Falls for his honeymoon he brings her to her family home to announce his nuptials only to discover that his two kindly understated elderly aunts have been putting arsenic in their homemade wine and knocked off lonely old men and buried them in the cellar with the help of a delusional uncle who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt and keeps blowing the bugle.
It gets worse, this is the night that his long lost older brother has returned, preferably escaped or on the run from somewhere. Jonathan Brewster (Raymond Massey) has turned up with a Dr Einstein (Peter Lorre.) Jonathan has had plastic surgery which has made him look like Boris Karloff and it seems he has also brought a corpse with him.
Mortimer fears for his new bride's safety and in the ensuing mayhem a flatfoot calls to look into the madcap Brewsters.
The film is fun, at times frenetic but is really too long for this type of comedy. Cary Grant just about gets away with the mugging to the camera, Lorre and Massey are sinister and funny together. Lane is sidelined too much. The film just feels a little too sloppy and out of control. An honourable failure.
Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is a famous drama critic known for his anti marriage stance. Which explains why he is trying to get a marriage licence incognito. He is getting married to the girl next door, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane.)
Before he goes off to Niagara Falls for his honeymoon he brings her to her family home to announce his nuptials only to discover that his two kindly understated elderly aunts have been putting arsenic in their homemade wine and knocked off lonely old men and buried them in the cellar with the help of a delusional uncle who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt and keeps blowing the bugle.
It gets worse, this is the night that his long lost older brother has returned, preferably escaped or on the run from somewhere. Jonathan Brewster (Raymond Massey) has turned up with a Dr Einstein (Peter Lorre.) Jonathan has had plastic surgery which has made him look like Boris Karloff and it seems he has also brought a corpse with him.
Mortimer fears for his new bride's safety and in the ensuing mayhem a flatfoot calls to look into the madcap Brewsters.
The film is fun, at times frenetic but is really too long for this type of comedy. Cary Grant just about gets away with the mugging to the camera, Lorre and Massey are sinister and funny together. Lane is sidelined too much. The film just feels a little too sloppy and out of control. An honourable failure.