Arsenic and Old Lace 1944

 

I never pass up the chance to watch “Arsenic and Old Lace, and that chance happened the other night when I watched the newly restored sparkling criterion release. This film is one of my childhood delights seen first on a late night movie show that was sponsored by Shaefer beer in New York City called “The Shaefer Award Theatre”. They would present classic films from the 30's and 40's that had never been shown on tv before and they would make a big deal about it. Since the films began after 11 in the evening I usually fell well asleep on our couch before the film was over, and Arsenic was in that group. I of course caught up with it later in life, this dark comedy about a family in Brooklyn including two elderly unmarried sisters who are serial killers. Funny ha ha. Directed in 1941 by Frank Capra who wanted a break from his “message” films of the 1930's but was not released until 1944 because of the stipulation that the film could not be released until the long running hit closed on Broadway.

Cary Grant plays their brother Mortimer a theater critic who is also a critic of marriage but who finally bites the marriage bullet. The film opens with a quick montage of a Brooklyn Dodgers fisticuffs baseball game and then its on to city hall where Grant is getting hitched to his lovely love played by Priscilla Lane who conveniently resides across a cemetery and his sisters house with her father who is a minister.

Arriving back in Brooklyn to his aunt's house, Grant accidentally discovers a body in the window seat and assumes that his “crazy uncle” who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt did the deed but his aunts nonchalantly tells him that it was them that did the deed, and there are 12 other bodies of old men buried in the basement. The mayhem, chaos and hysteria begins at this point with Grant displaying all three of the conditions mentioned in a broad farcical performance that some may find is over played and tiring, but not me. Granted (pun intended) this kind of farce and frantic mugging is not for everyone, but I thought Grant handled the broad brush strokes of his character well and he looked wonderful doing prat falls, showing broad expressions of shock and disbelief along with hysterical mugging crossing his handsome face.

His family members all brought in from the original Broadway production to repeat their roles were Jean Adair and Josephine Hull who has a marvelous hip hop walk as the two dotty sisters and John Alexander as the “Teddy” brother. The sisters in their minds are doing good helping lonely old men rest in peace by giving them glasses of elderberry wine laced with several kinds of poison. “Teddy” helps out by digging locks in the basement thinking that he is working on the Panama canal and helping to put to rest victims of yellow fever. This is dark stuff for sure. Besides being serial killers the cute sisters also express racist remarks about how the neighborhood is changing due to foreigners moving in, and also express their distaste that one of the victims is a foreigner and should not be buried with the “Christian” ones.

The last two major characters to appear is another brother Jonathan missing for years and his doctor friend who is a plastic surgeon and one of their recent victims who they want to bury in the basement. The role of Jonathan was originated by Boris Karloff but he couldn't leave the production in New York and Raymond Massey who is quite good was cast along with the great Peter Lorre as the doctor. Both are on the run for crimes including many murders and Massey is covered in scars and ugly from botched surgeries by Lorre. Many jokes are made about his looks including that he looks like Boris Karloff and Frankenstein, and there are one or two scary moments that made me jump that are supplied by him and Sol Polito's wonderful moody cinematography.

The action takes place appropriately on Halloween in a quaint neighborhood in Brooklyn but I couldn't name the place. Is it Brooklyn Heights? In any case the film is stagy with most of the action taking place in the big cluttered house with a charming outdoor set that is elaborate with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background along with a churchyard cemetery and quaint trolley cars going back and forth with painted passengers looking out the windows. Also in the cast are some great character actors of the period including James Gleason, Edward Everett Horton, Grant Mitchell and Jack Carson as a policeman who wants to be a playwright and pretty much steals every scene he is in which was not easy going in this group.