Movie Night: Arsenic & Old Lace (1944)

 

Arsenic and Old Lace is a marvelous 1944 American screwball black comedy crime film directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant. The screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein is based on Joseph Kesselring’s popular 1941 play of the same name. Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball comedy meeting of the madcap and the macabre. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts greet him with love, sweetness… and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon are among the outré oddballs populating ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises.

“It’s not mere hyperbole to state that Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace ranks as one of the funniest films ever made.”
– Matt Brunson, Film Frenzy.

Movie Nights are free of charge, including complimentary popcorn, and reservations are not required for Members or Guests. Films will be screened in the Upper Lounge starting at 7:00 P.M., and regrettably licensing restrictions mean that no minors are allowed to attend.