22. Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace is a seriously funny movie. I found myself laughing out loud several times, and it was just too absurd to be taken seriously.

Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), a confirmed bachelor and New York theater critic, is getting married to a Brooklyn girl at the beginning of the film. Their plan is to head to Niagara Falls (honeymoon capital!) as soon as she tells her father and he tells his maiden aunts. Mortimer gets to his aunts’ house, only to wind up in a sticky situation with their murdering of gentlemen callers. Yes, the aunts have been putting lonely old men out of their misery and burying them in their basement. Mortimer also has a cousin who thinks that he is Teddy Roosevelt, and he digs the Panama Canal in the basement, which becomes the men’s graves.

As Mortimer tries to figure out what to do with his aunts’ dead callers, his older brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) and his friend Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) show up at the house, complete with a dead body. There are a lot of complications with both parties wanting to bury their body in the basement. Jonathan also looks like Lon Chaney, due to a botched plastic surgery, and Dr. Einstein is supposed to complete surgery on him later.

Eventually, Mortimer gets Teddy and the aunts committed to Happy Trails (?) Sanitarium and his brother gets put back in jail. There are a lot of complications before the end of the film, including some classic lines like “Insanity runs in my family... It practically gallops.

Arsenic and Old Lace is really funny -- I don't think I can say that enough. Cary Grant definitely has one of his best slapstick roles, and plays the type he is so good at -- the lone sane person caught up in insanity. Raymond Massey is great -- he is so intense. I’d only seen him in Santa Fe Trail before when he played John Brown, but he’s great in this film as the crazy brother.

FILE UNDER: Classic Film ; 31 Films in 31 Days Challenge