ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, cutting loose in a hilariously harried performance) returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, who both starred in the Broadway production) greet him with love, sweetness and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother (John Alexander) who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal (Raymond Massey) who's a dead ringer for Boris Karloff and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon (Peter Lorre) are among the outré oddballs populating ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises. (Note courtesy of the Criterion Collection.) DIR Frank Capra; SCR Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, based on the play by Joseph Kesselring. U.S., 1944, b&w, 118 min. NOT RATED
AFI Member passes accepted.
Run Time: 118 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, June 24, 2023
Genre: Comedy
