Arsenic and Old Lace
1944  NR  COMEDY  1h 58min
CAST— Cary Grant, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane, Edward Everett Horton, James Gleason, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, John Alexander
MUSIC— Max Steiner  DIRECTOR— Frank Capra  BASED ON— Arsenic and Old Lace (play) by Joseph Kesselring

     Mortimer Bowers, confirmed bachelor and popular novelist of books such as The Bachelor’s Bible, scoffs at the very idea of love and marriage. But guess who’s showing his face in the marriage license bureau? Bowers himself, in the skin, as they say. He visits his two elderly aunts to share in the good news; and then he discovers the body. He goes into a flurry of panic trying to decide what to do about the body, and more importantly, he worries about his aunts. Easy there, the girls just want Mortimer’s brother to bury the body in the cellar with the other twelve. It falls a little flat towards the ending, with the introduction of Mortimer’s older brother, accompanied by his sinister little crony, a fugitive plastic surgeon. The real charm here is watching Grant fumble and bumble his way into insanity, trying to sort out the seemingly random motives behind these slayings. And who can forget the perps themselves? Those two matriarchal, mundane, murderous gray-haired grannies who seem to be enjoying booming business. More wine?
OUR RATING— ***