A Filmmaker's Review: "Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944)

An amazingly funny film and possibly one of the funniest dark comedies I have ever seen stars Cary Grant, Peter Lorre, Raymond Massey, Priscilla Lane and Jack Carson in "Arsenic and Old Lace" in which a family filled with murderers and insanity plans and plots against each other whilst all living in the same house. From getting the police involved, to planning a murder against another family member, this sure as hell should not be funny but sure as hell is definitely funny. There is something really hilarious in not only the jokes that are told, but the way in which people act which shows us that script has been brilliantly written to reflect the genre it is based within. A very difficult genre to actually get correct, the dark comedy type has shown to be one of the things that this film does perfectly and yet, at two hours long, it is a constantly brilliance from start to finish.

When we first see everyone, we can tell that something is not quite right about the Brewster family. The old women are murderers and the brother is a murderer, the doctor is an alcoholic even though he only works for the brother and the main character is paranoid. There's a whole system that ensues when the brother and the doctor come to live at the house at the same time that the main character and his girlfriend/wife move in next door. When the old women realise that their plans are going to be revealed, they do everything in their power to make the murderous brother go away - but instead the main character thinks of something worse to do to him instead. This is mainly because his own brother seems to try and kill him. The entire story is one big back and forth between characters and the fact that one of them is trying to outdo the other. Peter Lorre seems to be some sort of mediator even though he sides on the wrong side very often. I am going to say though, I have never seen Cary Grant in something so hilarious in my entire life.

I am going to say that there were so many characters that at times I had issues keeping up, especially with all the members of the force and the people that Mortimer was speaking to over the phone. There are just so many characters that at one point I had to write them down just to know who was who outside the people that were in the family and their closest people such as Peter Lorre and the guy's wife living next door. Anyways, I think that there were a lot of characters but absolutely none of them went to waste. In the scene where they're fighting Jonathan, it was very funny to see so many characters in peril at the same time, they had even plotted against the man who thinks that he is Teddy Roosevelt.

When I watched it for the first time, I have to tell you I could not take my eyes from the screen. My favourite performance was possibly by Peter Lorre who is, again, one of my favourite actors. His performances go one of two ways: really creepy or really creepily funny. In this he sort of adds a bit of both of them. He stays in the role of being serious but because of the way he behaves and the way in which he interacts with others, there is something really deadly funny about him and I think that this is done on purpose in order to make the brother that he works for look like a bit of a joke.

In conclusion, I think that this movie deserves far more respect than it gets for being one of the greatest dark comedy films ever made. It was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen and apart from that, all the performances were perfect, some were crazy and some were delusional but all were brilliant and that’s what made it such a great movie. When we see it as a whole, we see something that is so well made that I think I could just watch it over and over again.