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Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace

List Price: $19.97
Your Price: $14.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Grant, 2 Old Ladies & Elderberry wine=hilarity now on DVD!!
Review: Frank Capra delivers a great film adaptation of Joseph Kesselring's Broadway hit, "Arsenic and Old Lace". Originally filmed in 1941 just prior to WWII, but not released until 1944 because of the contract agreement to allow the play to complete its Broadway run. (The play ran for 1,444 performances.)

Cary Grant in the leading role as nephew, Mortimer Brewster is at his comedic best in this black comedy of wine, family & insanity. His 2 fabulous Aunts played by Josephine Hull & Jean Adair were encored to the screen and are perfect in their roles. Boris Karloff's obligations prevented him from doing the movie and was replaced by Raymond Massey in the movie version as Grant madcap brother. The great ensemble cast also included Peter Lorre, Edward Everett Horton, Priscilla Lane & John Alexander as a delightful zany crazy, thinking he is President "Teddy Roosevelt".

Summary: It is Halloween, Mortimers wedding day & his life is about to change forever. Visiting his 2 Aunts (Hull & Adair) with his wife (Lane - Ministers daughter!) on their way to their honeymoon to Niagara Falls discovers a body in the window seat. Thinking his crazy cousin, (Alexander) has committed the crime approaches his Aunts. They not only know about the body, but they know who he was & how he died. Their elderberry wine laced with a mixture of arsenic. Oh by the way, he is the 12th to be buried in the cellar. What is Mortimer to do & is his entire family insane? We began a very entertaining & hilarious journey to answering these & many more questions.

This DVD is an excellent Black & White Full Screen (before WideScreen) transfer. Extras include Production notes.

"Arsenic and Old Lace" film adaptation is very close to the actual Broadway play & is a great classic to have in your DVD library. Enjoy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Cary Grant at his Zanniest!!!
Review: I bought this to share with my 11 year old recently. She thought it was as funny as I did, which was a major concern of mine. I hadn't seen it in a while and had forgotton how much I enjoyed it. I absolutely adore Cary Grant, his trademark talking-under-his-breath-to-himself, the quirky eyebrow, his dumbfounded looks.. I could go on forever with this one. Why is it that I never realized that the one Aunt skips when she walks??? I was laughing hysterically at the background noises as well, slapstick at it's finest. :)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious
Review: I don't usually like dark comedy. This is the exception. It's a classic Cary Grant comedy and some of his best work. This writing is unpredictable and really fun. You won't blink during the whole film- if you do- you'll miss somthing very funny. Good for a laugh!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One WILD family!!!!!!
Review: Mortimer Brewster has a family that makes Eddie Murphy's "The Klumps" look tame. Mortimer is about to be married and has come home to tell his aunts, who have raised him, the delightful news. Mortimer soon finds out more than he bargains for about his aunts and then the pure slapstick begins. Enter his criminal brother (whose looks are continually being compared to the Frankenstein monster) and the plot thickens. A friend of mine recommended this movie one Friday night when we were sitting around eating pizza. I wasn't too thrilled because I wasn't particularly in the mood for a comedy but man, she couldn't have been more on target. I laughed the whole time! This movie is a comic masterpiece and, in my opinion, one of the best ever made. If you want to have a good time, buy this dvd. You won't be sorry!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious Movie!
Review: After reading the play, I knew I had to see how it was portrayed in a movie. I wasn't familiar with Cary Grant, but I was always under the impression that he was a serious actor. I wasn't sure how he would portray Mortimer Brewster, but he pulled it off! He is absolutely amazing. This entire movie will have you cracking up! And it's not just some corny comedy; it's quite intelligent in how everything comes together. I would recommend it to ANYONE.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: It Gave Me a Major Migraine
Review: This movie was loud and annoying. It seemed overplayed and exagerrated. I envision it as perhaps having been amusing on the stage, but on the screen it is abrasive. So many other people review it favorably that it made me think that perhaps I was just in a strange mood when I watched it. So, I later watched it again and had the exact same response.

There is a character in this movie who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. He repeatedly screams "Charge!" and then runs up some stairs and slams himself in his bedroom. Everytime he did this my two-year old daughter awakened crying and my cat clawed my knee where he rested. If the scene had been amsuing I would have endured, but it was annoying.

I love Capra and Grant films, but this is the glaring exception.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "There is a happy dale far far away"
Review: Ah Frank Capra scores with a first rate cast, a fine job directing, and a story so funny and so insane that one will laugh and laugh and laugh.

Like PSYCHO (you read that right)we think we are seeing a different story. We think its a story of a critic who has disparaged marriage who decides to marry, his two sweet aunts and his slightly crazy brother who thinks he's Teddy Rossevelt. All at once with the simple opening of a lid a whole new world of madcap mayhem enters.

Once the true plot of the film rises up the whole world goes bang-bang-bang. The gags run quick and you don't dare take your eyes off the screen.

This movie is a lot of fun. It should be required watching for the grumpiest of people.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Perfect viewing on a cold and wet winters afternoon
Review: This is a classic farce masterfully directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant as a lifelong batchelor trying to get married but having trouble with his literally insane family. If you like old movies, love old Cary Grant movies and enjoy nothing better than watching them on a cold, wet winters evening or afternoon, you'll love this. If you don't like Cary Grant you wont like this. If your looking for It's a Wonderful Life, you wont find it here but you will find an old fashioned farce that looks like it was adapted from the stage (and was adapted from the stage). But it's great fun and that's about all you need to know to about this movie BUT please don't buy the colour print of this movie. Why do they add colour to a movie that originally shot in black and white? Surely most people want to see the original versions of their favorite movies on DVD and it doesn't need colour to enhance it. It's fine as it is in good old fashioned black and white. It's a good old fashioned classic that'll make you reminisce about how "they don't make films like that anymore"...Enjoy!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Something about vicissitudes
Review: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE is a comedy that says something about vicissitudes. Two old maid sisters poison a dozen homeless gents to save them from the vicissitudes of life. That's what one of them said in the stage play version of this story. That line was edited from the movie. With or without viscissitudes, see this movie. High school drama coaches may have decided not to stage it any longer. The humor exceeds great. It picked on poor Brooklyn, the butt-city of jokes from the late 1930s until the Dodgers moved to LA. Gleason, the police brass, tried to play it straight and was funnier for the effort. Jack Carson, cop-on-the-beat, is an hopelessly inept lawman. Cary Grant was superb. His family's insanity seemed rational compared to Grant's efforts to sort out the ding-bat antics of a nephew who makes endemic charges up the staircase as "Roughrider President Teddy Roosevelt." Peter Lorre plays Doktor Einstein, plastic surgeon, as wicked as naughty boys who pull legs off crickets. And one of those "boys" is now adult "short-quite-a-few-cards-in-the-deck" Raymond Massey,who has matured into an escaped psychotic-convict. Massey is predictably recognized as a monster due to the irregular stitches left on his face by Doktor Einstein. Someone has to keep this mirthful merry-go-round from spinning into outer wacky-space. That role is given to lovely Priscilla Lane, the wife whom Grant ignores. We watched the black-and-white. Color doesn't remind me of those1930s-1940s Brooklyn bums.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: CHAAAAAAAAAAARGE
Review: This movie is rather odd and when i was little even a tad sooky but it is one of my all time favorite movies. you have cary grant in one of his finest roles and he along with the other cast are at the top of their game.


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