The Comedy of Terrors

The Comedy of Terrors (1964) is an American International Pictures comedy horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, and Joe E. Brown (in his final film appearance). The film also features Orangey the cat, billed as "Rhubarb the Cat". It is a rare blend of comedy and horror, much in the vein of Universal Pictures's 1948 classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The film recycles many of the character dynamics and situations (not to mention the cast) from the comedic "The Black Cat" segment of Tales of Terror, made by AIP the year before.

A novelization of the film was written in 1964 by Elsie Lee adapted from Richard Matheson's screenplay and published by Lancer Books in paperback (making certain changes in the story's ending).

Synopsis

Set sometime in the mid to late nineteenth century in New England, the film tells of unscrupulous undertaker Waldo Trumbull (Price), who murders people in their own homes in order to keep himself in business and to have enough money for drink.

One night, after the widow of his last victim absconds to Europe without paying his fee, Trumbull and his reluctant assistant Felix Gillie (Lorre) decide to murder their money-grubbing landlord, Mr. Black (Rathbone), who is said to have bouts of death-like sleep, something that Trumbull and Gillie are unaware of.

Black seemingly dies of a heart attack after discovering Gillie (who had climbed into the house through an upstairs window and escaped the same way), but revives in the funeral parlor's cellar. After a prolonged chase and struggle to keep Black inside a coffin, Trumbull knocks Black out with a mallet to the head and places the supposedly deceased Black in his family crypt, returning home to celebrate his new-found wealth. However, Black awakes again, escapes from the coffin and crypt and returns to the funeral parlour, quoting random lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth (from which he was reciting from a script at the time of his first cataleptic attack). Humorous events follow as Black chases Trumbull and Gillie around the house with an ax before (finally) being shot and (presumably) killed by Trumbull after a lengthy monologue.

Gillie elopes with Trumbull's neglected wife, and Trumbull is left a depressed heap on the floor. Hinchley (Karloff), Trumbull's father-in-law, appears and gives Trumbull some "medicine" (actually poison that Trumbull had been attempting to administer to Hinchley earlier in the film). The "medicine" works as intended and Trumbull drops dead as Hinchley makes his way back to bed, oblivious to the fact he has just committed murder.

At the end of the film, Black exhibits an allergic reaction to Cleopatra the cat, indicating that he is still alive.

Main cast

• Vincent Price - Waldo Trumbull
• Peter Lorre - Felix Gillie
• Boris Karloff - Amos Hinchley
• Basil Rathbone - John F. Black, Esq.

External links

• The Comedy of Terrors at the Internet Movie Database
• The Comedy of Terrors at AllRovi