I don’t know how many times I’ve said to
myself, "you know I’ve been meaning to see that film" and how often do you
NOT see that film, for when you’re at your local video store you instead decide to
rent the first series of star trek TNG for the FIFTH time or maybe you decide on a Friday
13th movie marathon.
The one thing I’m loving about DVD is watching a really old movie on a really new
disc. Quite often the movie in question has been cleaned up and made really spiffy for
it’s DVD Debut so there’s No excuse not to see it any longer.
Arsenic and Old Lace started as a stageplay and was brought to the big screen in the
early 1940’s. While it maintains some of it’s stage-like qualities (the movie is
pretty much set in the one big room in the Brewster sister’s home) this hasn’t
bogged it down with that obvious play based feel.
Now as I mentions A.O.L (hmm :) is one of those "meaning to see" films and
while I had some idea of what to expect I certainly wasn’t expecting such a
dark-toned movie mixed in with such warpspeed humour.
Three of the original stage players (Josephine hull, Jean Adair, and Raymond Massey)
have come on board for the film version and have done a wonderful job playing against the
40’s screen giant like Cary Grant, here playing Mortimer Brewster, newspaperman and
author who is well known around his parts for his negative views on marriage.
Ironically, Mortimer has found the love of his life in Elaine( Priscilla
Harper) and the two have just gotten hitched and head for Mortimer's Aunt's place to break
the good news..
Upon their arrival Mortimer discovers, much to his horror his two old aunts Abby and
Marta (Hull and Adair respectively) have been KILLING elderly gentleman using a poison
laced home brewed wine, and their mentally unstable nephew who thinks he's Theodore
Roosevelt (John Alexander) has been burying the bodies in the cellar.
The most amusing aspect of this story is that even knowing these ladies are essentially
serial killers, they are the sweetest old ladies who ever existed and you’ll just
love them, and the fact they have killed some 12 men won’t bother you one little bit!
Up until the arrival of Cary’s other brother Johnny (Raymond Massey) the tone of
the film is borderline slapstick, though when prison escapee Johnny and plastic surgeon Dr
Einstein (Peter Lorre) arrive on the scene things turn nasty and the tone changes quite a
bit. (but still with a nice dollop of humour to carry things on :)
Arsenic moves at a frantic pace, even for a 2 hour movie, which is quite a lengthy
running time given the films era.
It borderlines on farce at times, and almost goes over the edge, but manages to rescue
itself just in the nick of time.
A truly classic comedy caper (then again I wouldn’t expect anything less with
Frank Capra behind the lense…)
VIDEO
Closing in on 60 years old, this is still a nice looking black and white 4x3 transfer
(close enough to it’s original aspect ratio).
It’s not perfect, but is still in pretty good condition with only a light amount
of visible grain, and well controlled noise reduction (which would have helped clean up
the grain and light film artefacts)
I was surprised how good the black level was (though it was still a bit too low at
times), as you’ll see in the "dead body move" sequence, which is
essentially in complete darkness with a hint of light coming through from the cellar door.
There are clearly many layers of shadow and even with this total darkness you can still
see the outlines of the people as the walk around the room. Most impressive.
... 
...