Plainly put, this movie is a lot of fun! It is silly 1940's style farce at it's best. A still very funny remnant of a much kinder, much more innocent time. In 1947, the idea of seemingly harmless people committing murder was funny in it's own way because it was so far removed from reality. In 2002 it is just as likely as not to be the day's headlines. How sad. Arsenic And Old Lace , however, is anything but sad! Based on a very successful Broadway show by Joseph Kesselring, it tells the story of Abby and Martha Brewster (Jean Adair and Josephine Hull), two sweet old ladies who are angels of mercy to the sick and needy in their Brooklyn neighborhood and who advertise rooms for rent, yet never have any lodgers. It seems as though whenever a lonely old fellow with no family answers their ad, they sit him down and offer him a glass of their own special elderberry wine--a prime ingredient of which is arsenic (with just a pinch of strychnine). The poor old gentleman is then given a proper burial in the cellar, with full christain services, by their youngest nephew, who believes himself to be President Roosevelt, the cellar to be Panama, and the unfortunate corpse to be that of a yellow fever victim. Add into the mix two more nephews: Mortimer (Cary Grant), a charmingly confused fellow who happens to find out that the aunts who raised him are offing people in the parlour (He finds the body of the latest victim in the window seat by accident and does some of the funniest physical comedy in film history over it.), and a truly villainous one named Jonathan (Raymond Massey) who, along with his personal plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) has come home after 20 years dragging a corpse of his own, and things become increasingly frantic and hilarious. Especially after a clueless cop (Jack Carson) wanders in to find Mortimer tied to a chair and about to become Jonathan's latest victim (He is not about to be outdone by his aunts!). It's true that much of the movie's humor has become dated. This is probably unavoidable in a film that's over fifty years old. Some of the referrences are pretty obscure for today's audiences, and one of the recurring jokes--Jonathan's resemblance to Boris Karloff--isn't nearly as funny to those who aren't familiar with Karloff's films (In the play's original Broadway run, the joke was made funnier by the fact that Boris Karloff actually played Jonathan. In truth, it pales a bit in the film as it is because Raymond Massey doesn't look much like Karloff.). But if you're willing to take the movie on it's own terms, ignore the jokes you don't really get (or that just aren't that funny--there are a few of those, as well), you can sit back and enjoy some great physical comedy and one of Cary Grant's most likeable performances. He is, in fact, so likeable in this movie that you never really get around to asking yourself why someone born and raised in New York talks with an English accent. It's just part of that mad Brewster charm! 