I wasn’t a drama kid in high school, nor did the acting bug bite me later.  Given that, I am a bit confused by the only memory I have of a drama class I must have taken.  In a complete lapse of judgment, the instructor left me to direct a scene of Arsenic and Old Lace.  I’d say it was a bit like Charlie Brown in the Christmas special except, instead of demanding order and respect, I was standing on a table and encouraging anarchy.  The only detail I can recall is we changed all the lines about elderberry wine to Smurfberry wine.  I like to think the ensuing chaos was like something out of an early Marx Brothers film, but it was more likely just some lanky idiot yelling and annoying everybody else.

I already knew all the dialogue because I had seen the 1944 movie adaptation multiple times.  I would quote lines from it whenever remotely applicable, in much the same way my brain would soon be rewired to do the same for The Simpsons, This Is Spinal Tap and Withnail & I.  This is an immensely quotable picture, even if it can be difficult to find a scenario where it makes sense to drop in lines like “There’s thirteen dead bodies in the cellar!” or “Insanity runs in my family…[side-eye] it practically gallops.”

For the uninitiated, Arsenic and Old Lace stars Cary Grant as a theatre critic who was raised by his two elderly aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair).  His estranged brother Jonathan (Raymond Massey) is an international fugitive on the run with accomplice Peter Lorre.  Grant is eloping with the literal girl next door (Priscilla Lane) and just needs to recover and destroy the notes to his latest anti-matrimony screed he was writing.  While he searches the house, he has told cab driver Garry Owen to keep the meter running.  We’ll come back to that.

While looking for the notes, Grant will find a corpse in the window seat, setting in motion a chain of darkly humorous and highly improbably events.  You see, those kindly aunts, who are much loved in the community (“they’re like pressed rose leaves” as cop Edward McNamara tells rookie Jack Carson) have been poisoning the elderly men who inevitably inquire about the room they have advertised as being for rent.  John Alexander, a cousin who believes himself to be Roosevelt and goes by “Teddy”, then buries each additional victim in the dirt floor of the basement, an act he describes as digging locks for the Panama Canal.  This has somehow been going on for quite some time without Grant’s awareness.  At one point, the cat comes up from the basement, and he remarks, “Great, even the cat is on it.”

Matters will become complicated even further when fugitives Massey and Lorre arrive, seeking shelter.  Lorre is a plastic surgeon who can’t keep off the bottle, which is how Massey has ended up looking more than a bit like Frankenstein’s monster.  At first, the plan is simply to force Hull and Adair to let them stay long enough for Lorre to change Massey’s appearance, as his current visage makes his easy to pick out from a crowd, with the authorities looking for somebody who “looks like Boris Karloff.”  That line made even more sense in the original stage production, as Massey’s character was played by Boris Karloff. 

Aside from casting changes, much of what made that play such a success has been carried over into the movie.  In fact, one of the criticisms most frequently leveled at the picture is the staginess of it.  Admittedly, we see little of the house except for one huge common room that is the combined foyer, parlor and dining area.  We also have a long staircase, so Alexander can run up it repeatedly while screaming, “CHAARRGE!!!”, as he pretends he is Teddy leading the brigade up the hill at Guadalcanal.  Wisely choosing to not fix what is broken, director Frank Capra barely opens the film beyond this set.

It is surprising this is a Capra film, as this is a darker comedy than some viewers may anticipate.  Especially disturbing is some of the dialogue between Massey and Lorre, such as whatever method was employed in Melbourne which took hours for a victim to die.  Still, there’s even humor to be found in this, when Lorre points out the kindly old ladies have had just as many victims and their murderous nephew.  But Massey intends to one-up them that night by killing Grant, and he insists it be done by the mysterious Melbourne method.  Lorre, having more humanity, begs him to instead make it quick: “Why the Melbourne method?  In the end, the guy in London was just as dead as the guy in Melbourne.”  Even more to Lorre’s credit, he draws the line at Massey’s determination Alexander will be next, after he interrupts their attempted murder of Grant.  Anybody who would want to hurt Alexander’s Teddy is, indeed, a monster.

All of this provides an excellent framework in which Grant does his legendary double takes and sudden bursts of action, running from one situation to another.  I especially like the punctuation provided by the attempts of cabdriver Owen as he tries to inform Grant of the outrageous charge the meter is up to at any given time (at one point: “Hey, mister, you now own two cabs”).  Carson’s cop has a great scene with Grant where he finds the man inexplicably bound and gagged in the house and, instead of liberating him, decides he’s going to tell him the entire plot of the play he’s written.  Mind you, Massey and Lorre only managed to tie up Grant because he was describing how the same was done in a play “so bad it will still be running when you get out of prison”.

At this point, I realize there’s little point is going on any longer about Arsenic and Old Lace.  Words can’t fully do it justice, at least not my words.  Everything you need to know about this astonishing screwball comedy is right there in the film, so all you need to do is watch it.  It is a cornucopia of great lines delivered by great actors and I don’t foresee it ever being dislodged from my ten favorite films of all time.

Dir: Frank Capra

Starring Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton

Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray