COMEDY OF TERRORS, THE

(director: Jacques Tourneur; screenwriter: Richard Matheson; cinematographer: Floyd Crosby; editor: Anthony Carras; music: Les Baxter; cast: Vincent Price (Waldo Trumbull), Peter Lorre (Felix Gillie), Basil Rathbone (John F. Black), Boris Karloff (Amos Hinchley), Joyce Jameson (Amaryllis Trumbull), Joe E. Brown (cemetery keeper), Beverly Powers (Mrs. Phipps), Alan DeWitt (Riggs); Runtime: 88; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Samuel Z. Arkoff, James H. Nicholson; AIP/Kino Lorber; 1963)

“Wonderfully chilling but silly film.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Jacques Tourneur (“Wichita”/”Curse of the Demon”) directs this appealing comedy/horror film with a top-rung cast of celebrated horror pic actors. It’s a wonderfully chilling but silly film that brings on a new darkness to the funeral business.

It’s set in1890 in a small town in New England.
 
Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price) is a bad human being-an alcoholic, a verbal abuser of his wife, and a swindler as a businessman. He marries his aspiring opera singer wife Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson) so he can take over the  funeral business of her senile 92-year-old father Amos Hinchley (Boris Karloff). The greedy swine tries to kill his father-in-law by replacing his medication in a bottle with poison.

Waldo’s assistant, Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre), is a fugitive thief who he blackmails to follow his unethical burial instructions by reusing the one coffin the funeral parlor has. After burying the deceased, the undertakers dig up the body and dump it out of the coffin into a hole in the plot and fill it with earth.

Amaryllis and Felix make a love connection.

When Waldo’s Shakespeare loving landlord John F Black (Basil Rathbone) threatens eviction if the back rent is not paid, Waldo comes up with a sinister plan to murder him. When acted upon Black dies from a stroke and following the terms of his will is buried in a mausoleum. But he awakens, causing Waldo to act queasy. To comfort his son-in-law, he makes him swallow his poisoned medication.

REVIEWED ON 5/5/2025  GRADE: B+
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