Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace. 1944 Warner Bros. Pictures/Turner Entertainment [filmed in 1941].
Starring: Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane, John Alexander
Director: Frank Capra
Available at Amazon.

Mortimer Brewster is a lifelong bachelor and drama critic who has written several books where he describes marriage as an old fashioned superstition. Despite what he has written, he falls in love and married Elaine Harper (Lane), who grew up next door to his old family home in Brooklyn. After the wedding (on Halloween!), Mort goes to visit his bizarre relatives still living there: two elderly aunts Abby and Martha (Hull & Adair), and his brother Teddy (Alexander), who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt, and yells "Charge!" before running upstairs when he isn't digging "the Panama Canal" in the basement of the house. After Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in a window seat, he tells his aunts that Teddy needs to be institutionalized, since he's killed someone.

Teddy "Roosevelt" isn't the one responsible, and Mortimer's aunts cheerfully explain that it's their doing, calling it a "charity". Mortimer considers their activities of ending the lives of presumed suffering of lonely old bachelors by serving them poisoned elderberry wine spiked with arsenic a "very bad habit". The corpses are buried downstairs by Teddy, who thinks he's digging locks for the Panama Canal and only burying yellow fever victims.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Mortimer's brother Jonathan (Massey) shows up with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Lorre). Jonathan is a psychotic gangster trying to get away from the cops and looking for a place to dump his latest victim, whose face was altered by Dr. Einstein while inebriated. After Jonathan finds out what his aunts are doing, he decides to bury his victim in the basement, to their objection, and decides Mort will be his next victim.

Can Mortimer really be related to this group of nutcases?

This is a very funny and dark movie. Even though Cary Grant hated his performance here, it really makes the movie that more enjoyable. Highly recommended.