Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace is a farcical black comedy revolving around Mortimer Brewster, a theatre-hating drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and the local police in Brooklyn, New York, as he debates whether or not to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch” of cyanide; a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home; and a murderous brother who has received plastic surgery performed by an accomplice, Dr. Einstein, to conceal his identity, and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff. Written by Joseph Kesselring.