The Comedy of Terrors **** (1963, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, Joe E Brown) – Classic Movie Review 5385

Vincent Price stars in the funny 1963 black comedy horror movie The Comedy of Terrors as the evil undertaker Waldo Trumbull, who owes a year’s rent and lacks customers, so he finds a neat solution in sending his clients to an early grave.

Director Jacques Tourneur’s funny 1963 black comedy horror movie The Comedy of Terrors benefits enormously from the wonderful casting here of legendary quintet Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone and Joe E Brown – ‘your favourite creeps’.

Vincent Price stars as the evil undertaker Waldo Trumbull, who owes a year’s rent and lacks customers, so he finds a neat solution in sending his clients to an early grave, and Lorre plays his bumbling assistant, Felix Gillie. Plus Karloff, Rathbone and Brown also enjoy themselves lots as Mr Amos Hinchley, spry old landlord Mr John F Black and the Cemetery Keeper in this good fun, sometimes scary, horror send-up.

The macabre, slapstick screenplay is by fantasy expert Richard Matheson, who co-produces (with Anthony Carras). The slight downside though is that there is rather slack direction by Tourneur, maybe hampered by the fact that he was filming so cheaply and quickly (in four weeks) for the desperately cost-conscious American International Pictures (AIP).

However, even if you don’t agree that it is very hilarious or frightening, it is still worth watching anyway just for the great star cast.

Also in the cast are Joyce Jameson as Amaryllis Trumbull, Beverly Powers [credited as Beverly Hills], Buddy Mason and Loree Nicholson.

Floyd Crosby shoots it in widescreen and Pathécolor.

Joe E Brown appears in a cameo in his final film role.

It features several cast members from Tales of Terror, made by AIP the year before with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. However it is a follow-up to the 1963 The Raven, reuniting Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff.

Karloff was unable to play Mr John F Black because of back and leg problems, so he swapped roles with Basil Rathbone, and played Amaryllis’s elderly father Mr Amos Hinchley.

Richard Matheson recalled: ‘I am proud of that picture and of the fact that I got AIP to hire Tourneur. They said “Well, he’s a movie director. I don’t think he can handle this time schedule”. He had this book with every shot in it and detailed notes. He knew exactly what he was doing every inch of the way. He was so organised.’

Matheson added: ‘It didn’t lose money but AIP told me that the title cost them a lot. I think they were sorry they didn’t use an Edgar Allan Poe title, because Poe had a marketability. I guess they couldn’t figure out how to market it. But it was the last one I did because I was getting tired of writing about people being buried alive, so I decided to make a joke about it.’

The cast are Vincent Price as Waldo Trumbull, Peter Lorre as Felix Gillie, Boris Karloff as Amos Hinchley, Basil Rathbone as John F Black, Joyce Jameson as Amaryllis Trumbull, Joe E Brown as the Cemetery Keeper, Beverly Powers as Mrs Phipps, Alan DeWitt as Riggs, Buddy Mason as Mr Phipps, Douglas Williams as the Doctor, Linda Rogers as Phipps’s maid, Luree Holmes as Black’s servant, and Rhubarb the cat as Cleopatra.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5385

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