Hello all! Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and I love to buddy watch movies together – even though I am in Michigan and she is in Pennsylvania! We don’t literally watch together in a watch party, although that might be fun one time! We wanted our fall list to feel fall cozy, move into some more chilling movies, than turn cozy again for November.
This week we started our slide into slightly more scary – or creepy maybe – with Arsenic and Old Lace.
That’s right, we joined back up with our old pal Cary Grant! Seriously, did this man make a bad movie, ever? Even this madcap crazy movie was a masterpiece!
So. I usually like to recap because for some reason I find it fun. This week, I think I will skip that because there is just way way too much for me to do that. Criterion describes it well:
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 who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff (Raymond Massey), 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.
Where do I start with this one?! I guess first, my expectations, of which I had none. Before we watched it, Billy and I were remembering how our high school put this on as a play and it was a really big deal, although we don’t know why, and Billy as an art student there had to create posters to advertise it. That was the extent of our knowledge. I also knew that Cary Grant was in it.
Once we started it and the opening credits began to run, I knew, knew in my bones, that I was going to love this movie. All the vintage Halloween art, be still my heart! I had no idea this was actually a Halloween movie!! Joy on my Sunday-Monday Post said that she used to watch this movie every Halloween while waiting for trick or treaters and I think that is a perfect tradition that I may steal one day. Right now we are in the trick-or-treat gang and I have a few years before we are back to handing out candy.
Every single actor in this movie was superb. Cary Grant seemed to be having an absolutely fantastic time, like literally just having the best time making this movie, and his facial expressions were hilarious. I mean, I get that his character was slowly losing it and unraveling as the movie goes on, due to the crazy things that keep popping up and his need to protect his sweet yet murderous aunts, but as a real person, I think Cary Grant was having a good time.
The two little dotty aunts made me laugh too, especially Abby with her bouncy little walk. They were so darn sweet and cute, and so completely open about their “mercy” killings of lonely old men. Peter Massey as the menacing Jonathan was pretty darn scary sometimes, and Teddy was a hoot. Charge!!!!!
However, Peter Lorre was my favorite. I loved him in this. I often love him in movies but this one in particular, he just kept making me giggle with his deliveries. Peter Lorre plays Dr. Einstein, the sidekick and personal plastic surgeon to the ominous Karloff-esque Jonathan, who is responsible for Jonathan looking er..similar..to Frankenstein’s Monster. He claims that he had just watched that movie (although it is never named) when performing plastic surgery on Jonathan, and was intoxicated, leaving Jonathan looking like Karloff. The joke is rooted in the fact that on stage in the play, Karloff played that role, and Capra was not able to get him for the movie version.
Anyway, back to Peter Lorre. He was priceless. When Teddy shows him a photo, and points out a man who is supposed to be Dr. Einstein, Peter Lorre’s reply to Teddy is “My how I’ve changed,” in that Lorre way. To which Teddy points out to him, that photo hasn’t happened yet. Because that is the type of movie this is, totally crazy and off the wall. Or another scene, where the lights are out, and things are happening that we can’t quite see, and we know the characters are scattering or hiding, and we hear Lorre say, “Where am I? Oh hear I am” and he pops up out of the infamous window seat, that has been integral to hiding dead bodies all evening. Then finally, another part that made me giggle, was another conversation between him and Teddy, when Teddy is going to show him Panama, and Peter Lorre looks back and says “Well bon voyage!”
Which brings us to the basement, or Panama, as it is sometimes referred to. The basement full of 13 bodies, 12 of which were put there by the aunts, 1 by Jonathan and Dr. Einstein. It’s easy to forget throughout this movie that there are actually dead bodies buried in the basement! These people who seem so funny and kooky are actually crazy murderers. Grant’s character Mortimer Brewster feels a responsibility to protect his crazy aunts, who he had previously thought charitable women who were entirely sane. Perhaps the only sane people in his family other than him! He actually uses this as an argument to his new bride, Elaine, who lives right across the foggy cemetery from his family’s mansion home, that he can’t be married to her. They should have been on their way to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon; instead he is trying to coordinate getting Teddy into an institution to take to the fall for the bodies to keep his aunts off the hook. Anyway, he tells Elaine that insanity is simply rampant in the Brewster family, that doesn’t just run in the family, it practically gallops. Therefore, he shouldn’t marry. The family is just too insane.
This movie reminded me so much of Clue, and Billy and I wondered if Arsenic and Old Lace served as a bit of inspiration for parts of Clue, especially Tim Curry’s portrayal of Wadsworth. We thought he had to have taken some cues from Cary Grant’s Brewster! The faces, the physical comedy, the slowly losing it as things got wilder. The people coming in and out, the hiding of bodies – like no sir, there are no bodies in the study…or in this movie’s case, no sir, there are not 13 bodies in the basement. The aunts also made me think of the aunts in Practical Magic, even though they were less murderous in Practical Magic. A lot less murderous.
This movie was crazy, kooky, zany, and dark. The actors were phenomenal, especially Grant and Lorre. I laughed, I never knew what was coming, I was fascinated. I loved the set, the plot – just everything about it, honestly!
Next week is sort of wide open! It is either a wild card watch for Lisa and I, where we watch something independently and post about it, or a break week. However, I think we are both planning on Wild Card! If you are watching along with us, you can post the link to your cozy or creepy movie post of your choice, or just take a break week! It’s up to you!
For Lisa’s impressions, pop on over to her blog post here!
If you are linking up this week, slap your link down below! I would love to see your thoughts! And if not, it’s cool to just chat in the comments section!
You can find our movie watch schedule here!
I hope you enjoyed this post, and until next time, stay cozy!
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 
