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Arsenic and Old Lace

1944

Frank Capra

Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Peter Lorre, Raymond Massey ...

8.0

24,818

Comedy Mortimer Brewster stops off in Brooklyn to visit his two favourite aunts Abby and Martha to tell them that he has just gotten married. However, he discovers the dotty old dears have been feeding their boarders poisoned elderberry wine, desiring only to make them happy in death. They have then convinced their mad brother who imagines he is Teddy Roosevelt to bury the thirteen bodies in the cellar. The situation becomes even crazier when ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	P.P.K. The New York Times	"Good macabre fun (...) 'Arsenic and Old Lace' offers a large number of laughs and some genuine melodramatic thrills along with some cut-rate hokum"	POS
United Kingdom	David Parkinson Empire	"Cary Grant et al are on sparkling form in this classic darkly twisted comedy (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Geoff Brown Time Out	"It's dusty but ferocious, with rampant overacting and little sense of comic timing. Cary Grant (...) gives a particularly horrible performance (...) It's all weird, but not wonderful."	NEG
United States	Variety	"Frank Capra has expanded on the original play (by Joseph Kesselring) to a sufficient extent to maintain a steady, consistent pace"	POS
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"Frank Capra directed this adaptation of the Broadway hit in 1942, shortly before he entered the service (...) The rush shows in some of the sloppiest, clumsiest work Capra and his star, Cary Grant, ever did"	NEG

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