Underplayed Gems

Arsenic and Old Lace (1969)

Arsenic and Old Lace poster
Directed by
Robert Scheerer
Genre
black comedy
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 30m
Rating
7.0 of 10 from 4 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A theater critic discovers that his sweet elderly aunts have been killing lonely old men with poisoned wine. He tries to manage the chaos while dealing with his homicidal brother who looks like a horror movie monster.

comedicdarkcampyfast-pacedwhimsicaleccentricstageylighthearted

What happens

Arsenic & Old Lace is a 1969 American television film directed by Robert Scheerer and starring Helen Hayes, Lillian Gish, Bob Crane, Fred Gwynne, Sue Lyon, Jack Gilford and David Wayne. It is an adaptation of Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play Arsenic and Old Lace. The production was shot on color videotape before a live audience. Inserts of outside action that were shot on film were added to the production for the April 2, 1969 broadcast. The story is a black comedy in which drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Crane) discovers that his two elderly spinster aunts Abby and Martha (Hayes and Gish, respectively), who live in a house in Brooklyn, have been poisoning their lonely male guests. Fred Gwynne of Munsters fame played Jonathan Brewster, the role originated on Broadway by Boris Karloff, the star of the 1931 horror classic Frankenstein. Karloff was famous for playing Frankenstein's monster, on which Gwynne's character of Herman Munster was modeled. Jonathan Brewster is described by the other characters as resembling Karloff, who had played the role on television once before, in a 1955 adaptation for the CBS anthology series The Best of Broadway. The 1969 version was updated to contemporary times by having Crane's character meet Sue Lyon in a discotheque at the beginning. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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