Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

On Halloween day, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant,) a just-married writer/critic who had previously based his reputation on being a bachelor, becomes worried about the safety of his bride (and potential offspring) when he finds out that it’s not just one uncle who is nuts, but also his two elderly aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) and brother (Raymond Massey, of whom he was suspicious anyway.)

A very tight film adaptation of a popular play with not a moment or line wasted, but with some cartoonish, dated notions on mental illness.

It’s a farce so, for the most part that's not really a big deal.

The least dangerous individual is an uncle (John Alexander) who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt and who is clueless he is being used to dispose of the bodies of murder victims.

We are encouraged to believe that these are nice people who are nice looking, polite and do charity (at least the aunts are,) but their history includes additional sadistic acts (“Remember the needles under the fingernails?”)

The family suffers from an almost Lovecraftian devolutionary condition similar to that of the Femms or the Merryes (they even have a mad scientist lab of their very own!)

It is presented a lot more lightly but considering that these folks are unrepentant serial murderers and are also unable to even recognize their violations of societal norms they are even more dangerous than either the folks at the Old Dark House (1932) or the crazies presented in Spider Baby (1967).

Ironically, the uncle is also the most problematic character not because of insensitivity, but because his antics are mostly unfunny (and loud); the character being a child’s idea of what a madman is, and the character probably better suited for Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938) than here.

To be fair, his bugle call is later put to good use in a moment of suspense.

In the past I’ve complained about the out-of-control Cary Grant mugging on display, but for some reason I felt more generous in re-watching the film and I found that it wasn’t as grating last night.

I still feel Cary Grant’s wild reactions could be a bit toned down a bit but I might have been in a more receptive mood for it this Halloween.

One aspect that doesn’t generally get noted, but bears being mentioned, is the very early (for a film) metacommentary included in the script.

Scream (1996) was hailed as groundbreaking Slasher which described the Slasher formula and then proceeded to both subvert and adhere to its rules; but maybe at the time we had forgotten that Arsenic had already done it as early as 1944.

Mortimer describes a play where are character is being menaced exactly as the film shows the precise events happening to him all the while he remains oblivious to them.

More commonly mentioned is the use of the (supposed) Boris Karloff lookalike makeup and the repeated inclusion of his name in the dialogue. Had the film actually cast Karloff (who was engaged elsewhere at the time of filming) this aspect would have been even more amazing, (if you look like Karloff you must necessarily be evil? Karloff, who obviously looked like himself, was reportedly the nicest man in Hollywood!)

Another fun aspect, which may be a filmmakers’ perverse joke on the audience, (also noted recently in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014),) is focusing on a still character while wild action is happening around him which the audience barely gets glimpses of.

It might simply be a practical way to save on the budget, but it’ll probably simply frustrate the audience in the same way that a pitch black stage, useful in to dealing with the bad taste associated with transporting dead bodies, might also do.

With Priscilla Lane, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton, and Peter Lorre.

A Classic, fast-paced Screwball Black Comedy; slightly dated, but still very much worthwhile.