Arsenic and Old Lace

John Chard

9/10

Frenetic roller-coaster ride - Capra style! The Broadway show this film is based on ran for something like four years, such was the yearning for riotous rompathons in the 40s, and thus here the Capra adaptation is pretty much non stop mania. Led by the perfectly cast Cary Grant, the film barely pauses for breath, stopping only briefly to put a bit of creepy menace into the otherwise insane plot...

barrymost

10/10

There are thirteen bodies in the cellar! Oh, piffle. Drama critic Mortimer Brewster has just gotten married. But his newfound wedded bliss is interrupted by the disturbing discovery that his sweet old spinster aunts have been murdering lonely old men with their homemade elderberry wine, and burying the bodies in the cellar. This demented screwball comedy was the film that introduced me to Ca...