In the beginning of Frank Capra’s classic 1944 farce, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), chauvinist author of “The Bachelor’s Bible,” commits the (to him) cardinal sin of matrimony, tying the knot with Elaine (Priscilla Lane), a minister’s daughter. Stopping off briefly at his Brewster aunts’ manor before planning to embark on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls, Mortimer makes a rather disconcerting observation: there’s a dead man stuffed in the window seat.
Far from being surprised by this alarming bit of information, Aunt Abby (Josephine Hull) and Aunt Martha (Jean Adair) calmly tell their nephew that they poisoned the gent to relieve him of his loneliness…and that eleven more men are buried in the basement. The elderly mad-as-a-hatter serial killers are unwittingly aided in their genteel murderous spree by their bugle-playing brother Teddy (John Alexander), who yells “charge!” as he scampers up the staircase because he thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt storming San Juan Hill. Whenever the sisters have a body that requires burial, Teddy goes to the basement to dig another “lock” in the Panama Canal, where he inters the latest victim of “yellow fever.”
“Insanity runs in my family,” Mortimer tells Elaine, adding “it practically gallops.” So, what’s a purportedly sane relative to do? Mortimer decides that it’s best for 1) his aunts to cease and desist with the lethal curing of lonely hearts, and 2) to have his uncle committed to the local sanatorium (Happy Dale). But Mortimer’s plans are upended when his black sheep brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) shows up along with Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre), an alcoholic sidekick who has performed plastic surgery on the wanted-by-police Jonathan’s face so that he resembles Boris Karloff (an in-joke, since Karloff was Jonathan in Joseph Kesselring’s original play). And with that the stage is set for an escalating series of madcap antics within this suddenly full house of semi-benign and not-so-benign lunatics.
Presented with a new, restored 4K digital transfer, extras include new audio commentary featuring Charles Dennis, author of “There’s a Body in the Window Seat!: The History of ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’”; a 1952 radio adaptation starring Boris Karloff; and a leaflet with an essay by critic David Cairns.
Made in 1941 but held for release until 1944 (because the play was still running), Arsenic and Old Lace is Capra’s only black comedy, one that—uncharacteristically for the director—features no social message whatsoever. Grant is at his comic best, serving up one Stan Laurel double-take after another as the ghastly revelations pile up. And original stage cast members Hull, Adair, and Alexander are pitch perfect as the mad Brewsters. Add in Jack Carson as a cop aspiring to be a writer who makes an opportune (or inopportune, depending on the perspective) visit to the Brewsters late in the proceedings and you have all the elements for a fun romp. Highly recommended.