With Halloween less than 2 weeks away, I thought I would start talking about some of my favorite Halloween movies. Believe it or not, not all Halloween movies are Horror films, and not even all of them are scary. In fact, my favorite Halloween movie is one of AFI’s Top 100 Comedies of all time and primarily uses the holiday as a backdrop, but it’s still an important element in the film. That film is Arsenic and Old Lace.

The word classic is used way too much, but it’s wouldn’t be an overstatement to use that word to describe this film directed by the great Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), who was one of the greatest directors of his day, and should be on any list of the greatest directors of all time. The screenplay was written by Julius and Philip Epstein, who also wrote the screenplay for Casablanca. The film stars Cary Grant at his debonair yet bumbling best as Mortimer, Raymond Massey as his sadistic brother Jonathan and Peter Lorre as the ever creepy palstic surgeon who provided Jonathan’s “disguise”.

Of course, all of this star power doesn’t guarantee a good film, but this film delivers on a number of levels.

First of all, it’s an incredibly funny film. The premise has Mortimer as a New York City drama critic who has written books on the folly of marriage. Of course, he gets married in the first scene of the film, and goes back to Brooklyn to tell his Old Maid Aunts who raised him the news, and discovers that they’ve been using arsenic laced tea to poison lonely old men to put them out of their misery. They then have Mortimer’s slightly insane cousin, who happens to think he’s Teddy Roosevelt, bury them in the basement, telling him that he needs to dig a new lock for the Panama Canal. Through all of this Mortimer is tries to get Teddy committed to an asylum while also attempting to appease his suspicious new bride on their wedding day.

Secondly, it adds a level of creepiness by using Halloween as a backdrop and using the murderous Jonathan as a threat to Mortimer’s thin plan of trying to get everything blown over. Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre do a great job in this film of adding a sinister element to it while also adding comedy that does little to blunt their menace.

That leads to the third reason I love this film so much and that’s the performances of the actors, especially Cary Grant. His facial expressions and histrionics throughout the film add to its comic quality and take the film over the top in its entertainment value.

But Grant, Massey and Lorre aren’t alone in the great performance department. The sign of a brilliant director is the ability to get first class performances out of the supporting cast, and Capra certainly did that. The minor characters give memorable performances that increase the comedy exponentially and sometimes in subtle ways. For example, one of the plump aunts doesn’t move anywhere without bouncing merrily, whether it’s opening the door or getting the wine. Cousin Teddy yells “CHARGE!!!!” every time he goes upstairs as though the stairs are actually San Juan Hill.

But what really brings the funny, the the fourth aspect that makes this film so wonderful is the script. The Epstein brothers write in jokes and puns that are funny and thoughtful. They also invoke a little history. At one point, Jonathan and the doctor are running through a list of people Jonathan has murdered, and the doctor tells him that he can’t count one in particular because he died of pneumonia. Jonathan responds, “He wouldn’t have died of pneumonia if I hadn’t shot him.” The historical context is the assassination of President James Garfield, who died of pneumonia weeks after he was shot. His assassin, Charles Guiteau pleaded not guilty because the president died of pneumonia, but the judge in the case told Guiteau that the President wouldn’t have caught pneumonia if Guiteau hadn’t shot him.

It’s one of the funniest lines in the script and in uses serious historical context as its reference.

What that shows is the importance of being well read and having a wide breadth of knowledge and interests as a writer, because you’ll never know when that knowledge will be useful in your writing.

Overall, this film is rightly regarded as a classic, and should be seen by anyone who is pursuing a career in filmmaking. It should also be seen by anyone who loves good films, because it truly is one of the great ones.