Release Date: October 11, 2022
Prices and Links:
Criterion- $31.96
Amazon- $27.99
DiabolikDVD- $29.99
Director: Frank Capra
Writers: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Joseph Kesselring
Starring: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, cutting loose in a hilariously harried performance) returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, who both starred in the Broadway production) greet him with love, sweetness . . . and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother (John Alexander) who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal (Raymond Massey) who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon (Peter Lorre) are among the outré oddballs populating Arsenic and Old Lace, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises.
Prices and Links:
Criterion- $31.96
Amazon- $27.99
DiabolikDVD- $29.99
Director: Frank Capra
Writers: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Joseph Kesselring
Starring: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton
- United States
- 1944
- 118 minutes
- Black & White
- 1.37:1
- English
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, cutting loose in a hilariously harried performance) returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, who both starred in the Broadway production) greet him with love, sweetness . . . and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother (John Alexander) who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal (Raymond Massey) who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon (Peter Lorre) are among the outré oddballs populating Arsenic and Old Lace, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring Charles Dennis, author of There’s a Body in the Window Seat!: The History of “Arsenic and Old Lace”
- Radio adaptation from 1952 starring Boris Karloff
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic David Cairns
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