#1153: CAPRA, Frank: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

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CAPRA, Frank (United States)
Arsenic and Old Lace [1944]
Spine #1153
Blu-ray


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.

118 minutes
Black and White
Monaural
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2022

Director/Writers

From the stage play by Joseph Kesselring.
Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein.
Frank Capra was 47 when he directed Arsenic and Old Lace.

Other Capra films in the Collection:

#736: It Happened One Night (1934)

The Film

a

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by critic David Cairns.

Commentary

Featuring Charles Dennis, author of There’s a Body in the Window Seat!: The History of “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Radio adaptation

From 1952 starring Boris Karloff.

Trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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