"
The Comedy of Terrors"
*** (out of ****)
"People are dying this year that have never died before!"
Addington Ganzy (Bert Wheeler) - Hook, Line and Sinker (1930)
Despite whatever wise-cracking comedian Bert Wheeler may have to say the dying business ain't what it used to be. Especially for Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price). Business has slowed down to such a degree that Waldo is a full year behind on his rent to Mr. Black (Basil Rathbone) - who has given Waldo 24 hours to come up with back payment or he will be put out in the street!
I don't think Waldo, a drunkard, would care very much about being out in the street except for the fact after a night filled with drinking, where would he rest his weary head? Waldo's wife, Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson) and his senile father-in-law, Amos (Boris Karloff) may feel differently about the situation. Not that Waldo would give their considerations much thought. Our introduction to the married couple shows them bickering, hurling insults at one another. Amaryllis accuses Waldo of only marrying her to take over her father's funeral parlor business, which Waldo doesn't object to.
But what is Waldo to do? He can't help it if business is slow. What is he supposed to do? Go out and kill people? Can he do that? Should he do that? Someone might considered that wrong, wouldn't they? "The Comedy of Terrors" isn't Dostoyevsky so these moral ponderings aren't given much weight. And so Waldo and his assistant, Mr. Gillie (Peter Lorre) head out to take matters into their own hands.
As comedy-horror movie plots go, this isn't half bad. The casting of heavyweights like Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff is inspired. It gives "The Comedy of Terrors" horror movie credibility while also allowing the actors to poke fun at their screen personas. Plus, the fact the movie was distributed by American International Pictures (AIP) it makes us think of Roger Corman, who often casted these actors, and released his Poe adaptations through AIP.
"The Comedy of Terrors" however wasn't directed by Roger Corman but instead by another venerable filmmaker of the horror genre, Jacques Tourneur. Tourneur, along with producer Val Lewton, gave us the highly influential horror movies "The Cat People" (1943) and "I Walked with A Zombie" (1943). After his collaboration with Lewton, Tourneur also directed "Night of the Demon" (1957). With such a pedigree behind this movie, they could have given us an actual horror movie. Too bad they didn't!
It feels like AIP wanted to make a kind of sequel to "Tales of Terror" (1962), which the studio released a year prior. That movie was an entry in Corman's series of Poe adaptations and used the anthology format. There was some humor added to one of the three stories and here it seems the decision was made to fully capitalize on it and make a full feature comedy. Much of the cast is even the same - Price, Rathbone, Lorre and Joyce Jameson.
In true comedy-horror fashion the movie is a balancing act between the two different genres. Often there is both comedy and horror in the same scene. Lets take for example a sequence involving Waldo and Mr. Gillie mistakenly believing they have killed a man. When brought back to their parlor, the man awakens and so the two men sit on top of his casket while the man fights for his life to be taken out. It is both horrific and comedic. These two men are killing a man. Essentially burying him alive and yet we laugh at the situation because of how outlandish it is. Waldo keeps insisting to the man he is dead and the man keeps refuting it!
Much of the comedy is of a very silly nature. In the first scene we see Waldo and Gillie as on-lookers at a funeral. Once the family pays their respects, the camera speed is sped up and silent movie ragtime piano is played while the two men hustle to dump the man's corpse into the ground, keeping the casket so they can reuse it! Bury him and drive off in their carriage.
There is also a running joke between Waldo and Amos. Amos' character basically sits by a table and dozes off and only awakes to mutter something completely unrelated to the conversation others are having. Waldo, who has grown frustrated with Amos, regularly offers to give Amos his medicine, which is actually poison. Whenever he pours some in Amos' cup, Amaryllis is there to take the cup away. Amos however, unaware of what is going on, becomes discouraged with his daughter constantly interfering with his medicine.
What may be surprising to some viewers is how well Price, Lorre, Karloff and Rathbone are at handling comedy. Price and Lorre have an almost Laurel & Hardy relationship as they try to break into homes and create customers. Price and Lorre's antics reminded me of the Laurel & Hardy comedy "Night Owls" (1930).
The script was written by Richard Matheson, who would go out to write the novels "I Am Legend" and "A Stir of Echoes". He worked with Corman on the Poe adaptations writing the scripts for
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1960),
"The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961) and
"The Raven" (1963). It's said he grew tired of the Poe adaptations and writing stories of people being buried alive, so he decided to turn it into a joke.
While some modern viewers will probably consider the movie camp, I like the movie's spirit. It would have been nice if the movie paid homage to Tourneur's horror movies from the 1940s instead of Corman's Poe adaptations. I find it funnier than Corman's "The Raven". Matheson wasn't really allowed to show off his ear for dialogue in the Poe movies but here his words sparkle and he is not only able to combine comedy and horror but Shakespeare too. The movie's title is a pun on the play "The Comedy of Errors" and one character goes around quoting "Macbeth".
Unfortunately, the movie was a flop at the box-office but today remains something of a cult classic and is very deserving of a second look. It's not the best example of comedy-horror out there but you could do a whole lot worse.
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