Each Friday we will be bringing you weekend-viewing movie picks available for streaming on Netflix! From the popular to the obscure, we will browse Netflix’s Streaming library so you don’t have to, and bring you what we consider to be “Must Watch” selections!
Arsenic and Old Lace
Directed by Frank Capra
Starring Song Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Joesphine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey
This Friday’s “‘Flix Pick” is a film I fell in love with about eight years ago as a senior in high school. I can’t exactly remember why, but our AP English teacher, Mr. Tucker (my favorite teacher from my formative high school years), made us watch Arsenic and Old Lace. Not being terribly familiar with films from the 1940’s, nor that thrilled to be watching some “old, crappy black and white movie”, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. However, a mere ten-minutes into the film I was hooked, and ever since that day this film has always been one of my all-time favorite movies.
Cary Grant plays Mortimer Brewster, a former womanizer and denouncer of the institution of marriage. Brewster reconnects, falls in love with, and marries a woman whom he grew up with in Brooklyn, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane). After their Halloween wedding, Brewster decides it’s time to take Elaine home to meet the family, his very eccentric family. Still living in his old family home are his two elderly aunts, Martha and Abby, and his brother, “Teddy”, who is under the delusion that he is Theodore Roosevelt. Shortly after the newlyweds’ arrival, Brewster is appalled to find a dead body hidden in a window seat. He confronts his aunts about it, concerned that his brother may have committed the murder while under the influence of his delusions, but his aunts explain to him very nonchalantly that they have developed a “very bad habit” of killing off lonely bachelors with elderberry wine spiked with arsenic and having “Teddy” bury them in the basement under the illusion that he is digging locks for the Panama Canal.
Already concerned about his aunts’ behavior, Brewster’s situation becomes more complicated when his murderous brother, Jonathan, on the run from the police with his accomplice, a plastic surgeon named Dr. Herman Einstein, show up looking to dispose of their latest victim. Seemingly the only sane member of his family, Mortimer Brewster is tasked with avoiding being murdered by his own criminal brother, caring for his other delusional brother, and trying to protect his well-meaning aunts from the consequences of the “charity” they have been providing to the single men in town – all while dealing with nosy, bumbling police officers and the concern that he too will eventually succumb the crazy that seems to run in the family.
Arsenic and Old Lace may sound like quite the dark tale, but this is an incredibly funny film from Capra based on the play of the same name. Josephine Hull and Jean Adair play the parts of elderly crazy women with good intentions so well, they steal nearly every scene they are in and you can’t help but love how intent they are in that what they are doing is a good deed to the lonely men in town. John Alexander provides a lot of laughs as he insists in only taking the stairs in one manner: with a bellowing “Charge!” and a mad-dash up them with sword in hand. Cary Grant is charming as the only sane member of the Brewster family and has many funny moments in his own right as he frantically attempts to corral all the murder and mayhem happening around him. Priscilla Lane looks absolutely gorgeous in this film in a way that only an actress from the 1940’s can. While not given a lot “to do” in this film, she plays a great anchor to Grant as Elaine; she’s sweet, but she’s also a woman who has changed Mortimer’s entire outlook on love, and in over her head with his crazy family.
I couldn’t recommend a better weekend date night movie than Arsenic and Old Lace. It’s a funny and sweet film from a Hollywood long-since gone, perfect for a night of take-out and movie-watching. The best part is that it’s streaming on Netflix Instant, so add this classic to your instant queue, you won’t regret it!