ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)
restored classic with soundtrack, 118 minutes.
Tickets: $25/$20
(T 0419 267 318)
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvellous 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 who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff (Raymond Massey), 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.
In the words of Grant’s character: ''..Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.''
Tickets: $25/$20
(T 0419 267 318)
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvellous 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 who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff (Raymond Massey), 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.
In the words of Grant’s character: ''..Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.''
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Location
State Library NSW
Metcalfe Auditorium, Macquarie Street
Entrance is via rear of the cafe
Sydney NSW 2000