By Keri O’Shea
The marriage of horror and comedy is not only nothing new, but it seems to have been a decidedly less tricky pairing, back when the gore was less protracted and graphic and the laughs depended less on shocks to make viewers laugh-out-loud. The distance between the two was shorter, see, but not only that: many of the actors who cut their teeth on lugubrious subject matter, or even made their names by it, were all too happy to send themselves up given the chance. Cue AIP, fresh from making their Tales of Terror the year previously, who launched into The Comedy of Terrors with many of the same cast members and a readiness to play for laughs as they did in The Raven. When you looks closer at the crew behind The Comedy of Terrors, though, it looks like a far more …unusual project. Written by Richard ‘I Am Legend’ Matheson and directed by Jacques Tourneur? What stripe of horror-comedy was this? the answer is, actually, rather a gentle one – whatever the oddball pedigree behind the title might promise.
We start our tale in New England, at some point in the late 19th Century: Messrs. Trumbull (Vincent Price) and his assistant Gillie (Peter Lorre) are the hapless entrepreneurs behind an ailing undertakers’ business, which Price inherited via marriage from his wife’s husband, Mr. Hinchley (Boris Karloff). Not that Trumbull has any gratitude for this, mind, or any inclination to build the business up legitimately with hard graft; he’s an old sot, whose limited wit may raise a smirk of his own, but in time-honoured tradition can’t please his much-younger wife Amaryllis (who in similar time-honoured tradition coulda been someone) nor pay his towering bills. So much for that. But what to do when it looks as though the Trumbulls will be evicted? Why, housebreaking – and murdering the people they find inside, so it’s lucky that Trumbull & Gillie are first on the scene in the morning, ready to offer their services for the funeral. It’s a set-up which allows for plenty of haranguing, misunderstandings, pratfalls and failures to ‘shhhhhh!’ whatsoever – but it’s bound to go even more wrong…
The comedy of this film may be based around murder and fraud, but it all feels rather comforting, in its way. The first reason for this is that an absolutely superb cast all look wonderfully at ease with one another, an indication no doubt of their friendships off-screen and their shared relish for self-deprecation. Lorre and Price in particular look made to work together in this capacity. The evident physical differences between them, and the scolding master/servant relationship they invoke so well all work brilliantly here, making what could otherwise be rather hollow old jokes very funny. Timelessly funny, even, when in other hands, the old making-a-huge-noise-when-you’ve-been-asked-to-be-quiet routine might not even raise a smile (and in some hands it hasn’t). You can also see that Price in particular is enjoying the opportunity to make fun of himself, pronouncing his cruel slights against his wife with relish, gulping back his booze with a sneer and overextending his facial expressions into the realms of pantomime villain. It’s a joy to watch.
The rest of the distinguished cast are excellent, too. Karloff, playing a supporting role here as Trumbull’s father-in-law (as his physical condition wasn’t up to Basil Rathbone’s role as the dogged landlord character Mr Black) seems to be enjoying himself, too; it’s often been said that in his later years Karloff often referred to his age and frailty, implying that people kept him around on-set for the sake of it or for menial tasks at best (Christopher Lee remembers that Karloff would joke that he was retained on set ‘to sweep the floors’) – well, given the chance to play a crazy old duffer who really mishears and misunderstands everyone, he seems to have a wicked sort of mischief about him, as does Rathbone, an ambiguous fellow who throws his lines of Shakespeare into the mix with glib energy and manages to make the bard’s greatest tragedies terrifically silly – if word perfect. Then there’s the platinum blonde wife Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson) who doesn’t get very much screentime, but shows she has some comedy actress chops nonetheless with her daft wife routine and her tuneless singing gags (Les Dawson would have loved it, and who knows? Perhaps he did.)
Not bawdy or terribly sophisticated, all told, The Comedy of Terrors derives its charm from its talented cast and crew, its oddly-pleasing, familiar period setting and – I don’t mean this word in the pejorative sense which has crept in during the decades between us and this film – its camp style. It’s light Gothic entertainment through and through, a tale signifying nothing, perhaps, but an opportunity to see some of our best-beloved actors having a damned good time. There’s plenty contagious about that, and you can thank Arrow for your chance to grab a superb-looking release of this film later this week. A host of extra features also await, including an audio commentary by David Del Valle, an archive interview with Vincent Price, a feature on writer Richard Matheson, a brand new Tourneur essay by author David Cairns and a range of accompanying artwork.
The Comedy of Terrors will be released by Arrow Films on February 16th 2015.