The film features a mix of Hollywood stars and original Broadway cast members:
Mortimer soon learns that his aunts have been "charitably" poisoning lonely old men with elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide. Matters escalate with the arrival of: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
: Based on the 1939 play by Joseph Kesselring, the film retains a fast-talking, door-slamming energy that keeps the 118-minute runtime moving at a breakneck pace. The film features a mix of Hollywood stars
: Mortimer’s brother who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt and is busy "digging the Panama Canal" (burying the aunts' victims) in the cellar. : Some scholars view the Brewster home—a charming
: Some scholars view the Brewster home—a charming facade concealing a cellar full of bodies—as a metaphor for the contradictions within the American dream. Critical Legacy
as Elaine Harper: Mortimer’s increasingly frustrated new bride. Key Themes and Production
The story follows (Cary Grant), a drama critic and famous bachelor who finally gets married on Halloween. When he returns to his family’s ancestral Brooklyn home to tell his aunts—the sweet and seemingly charitable Abby and Martha —the news, he makes a grisly discovery: a dead body hidden in the window seat.