The Comedy of Terrors(1964)
In lieu of Roger Corman's recent oscar, I saw it as a victory for us devotees of sewer cinema. But then I began thinking of what it was that seperates(and elevates) him and AIP studios from the other hacks and B-meisters who have strutted their stuff on the silver screen. Certainly the man had a raw talent and a knack for putting out completely satisfying product, but it becomes clear that Corman was by and large more a businessman than an artist. With a few exceptions, up until the two ''nerd kills a bunch of people by accident'' comedies, the drag-racing flicks, and the Poe/Price cycle of the 1960s, the man's product was virtually indistinguishable from others, sometimes worse. His greatest artistic triumph; 1964's vastly overrated Masque of the Red Death, was completely soiled by Corman's own later attempt to remake it, showing how little care he had put into it's artistic qualities in the first place, and his attempts to explain some things in the movie away symbolically are just plain laughable(Oh, there is symbolism in Masque; all of it taken from Bergman). The fact that he has directed virtually nothing of note after his heyday seems to prove this, especially considering how so many of his defenders always said he could make something truly great if he had access to bigger budgets or CGI effects. Well, he has, and most of it's Sci-Fi channel dreck. Quite fitting, as he had the art of low-budget filmmaking down to a science, if not an art.
An absolutely first-rate businessman, director and scientist. But not an artist.
It occured to me then that the greatest strength of Corman was his willingness to be used by others under whatever conditions imaginable. And this is when I started to realize just how effective and clever AIP producers Nicholson & Arkoff really were. They didn't need an artist, they needed a tool. And Corman was the best tool available to perform their tasks, and in his niche of period-era horror based on Poe and starring Price; no one else could have possibly done a better job.
The secret for why AIP was so successful is simple; they weren't just rip-off artists or trend-followers, they would follow trends, rip things off, but would also check to see what worked and what didn't so they could filter out what was unneeded and cut corners. And in the B-movie business, corners being cut is always welcome. That's why AIP's early work was so dismal compared to their later work. They would just follow a trend and forget whatever had made their knock-off successful(if they were successful at all). When they noticed that hey, it's Frankie & Annette who made those beach movies successful, and that it was Vincent Price & Roger Corman who made their horror pictures successful, suddenly they realized what they had and milked them for all they were worth. Other studios would just keep grinding junk out and not pay any attention to what made it successful other than general things like genres. AIP didn't.
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The AIP formula at work.
It is this method which accounts for both the success and failure of the 1964 horror comedy The Comedy of Terrors. It recognizes what worked about the earlier Poe-movies, and retains what made them sucessfull, right down to casting the same actors in similar roles. Script by Richard Matheson? check. Vincent Price? check. The great comedic chemistry of Price & Peter Lorre? check? Dark humor? check. Aging celeb willing to appear in and recieve prominent billing for little more than a cameo? check. Corman?
No.
By leaving out Corman, the master craftsman of his trade, the perfect tool for his niche, and hiring the extremely talented(in fact, more so than Corman), but humor-deaf Jacques Tourneur, AIP slit the throat of what could have been a masterpiece by bringing together all essential elements but one.
But still, how could an all-star horror spoof teaming genre legends Price, Lorre, Rathbone, Karloff, Matheson, Tourneur and Rhubarb the Cat(yes)in one film not at least be fun? For the more non-discriminating viewer, it certainly is.
The screen's greatest horror star!
The film is a retread of the Black Cat/Cask of Amontillado comedy-relief segment in Tales of Terror, combined with the climax of the deadly serious The Premature Burial. It even recasts Joyce Jameson as the abused, romance-hungry housewife and Peter Lorre and Vincent Price as the two men in her life. The difference being that the roles from that film's segment are reversed; this time Lorre is the hero(yes) and Price is the abusive drunkard. The sucess of the second Price-Lorre teaming The Raven, which featured Karloff, pretty much guaranteed his partcipation as well. So Karloff is on hand as Jameson's senile, deaf father. Rathbone is their tyrannical landlord, who all but needs a whip and some slaves to be a near-perfect caricature of the Simon Legree-archetype.
The Masters of the Macabre at their least.
The plot involves an unsucessfull undertaking business run by Waldo Trumble(Price) & Amos Hinchley(Karloff)with prison-escapee Felix Gillie(Lorre)as the coffin-maker. They are so poor they've re-used the same coffin over and over again for 13 years by dumping out the bodies while no one's looking. To make matters worse, there hasn't been any business in a year, and it's implied that what meager business profits that they have had was squandered by Tremble...err Trumble(see the film to get that joke) using the money to get drunk. This has led to Trumble's wife Amaryliss(Jameson) starting a torrid affair with Gillie. Meanwhile, the rent is due, so Trumble decides the only way to make money is to turn to murder, something both he and Gillie(how did this clumsy, sensitive little man ever escape?)aren't very talented at. Let the pratfalls ensue.
It's entirely possible Gillie escaped because an ancestor of Deputy Dipshit from the Posture Police was on the case.
The film has a lot of hit-and-miss jokes and performances. Price and Jameson's Shakespearean-bickering is funny at first but gets old fast. There's also a truly unfunny subplot where Amaryllis reveals she once had dreams of being a soprano, and sings so loudly and poorly it shatters glass and drives everyone including the cat insane. Of course, Gillie is so smitten he doesn't care and even compares her to a nightingale. The real scene-stealers are Karloff(who babbles on incoherently, mishear things, spouts non-sequitirs on the history of embalming, and keeps chastising Amaylliss for keeping him from Trumble's medicine, which is actually poison.), Rathbone(whose character suffers from catalepsy and is constantly appearing to die only to get back up again, usually while spouting Shakespeare. He's easier to kill but harder to keep down than both Grigori Rasputin & Kenny McCormick combined.) and that goddman cat! Seriously, I would love to know who trained this creature, it has more nuance and comedic timing than most human actors. ''Special Guest Star'' Joe. E. Brown has a cameo as a night watchman, where he sucessfully defuses the closest thing to a scary moment in the film. It's still great to see him do his trademark yell. By the way, I love when older films refer to actors who do cameo roles as ''guest stars''; it's a lost art and one of the many reasons I enjoyed Inglourius Basterds so much.
There are some pretty pathetic bad jokes in the first half, but after the first murder is committed, it all picks up and becomes so much fun you wish it would go on forever. Highlights include Rathbone's ''final'' dying speech and Price & Lorre's sword fight at the end. The final fate of Waldo Trumble is also one of the single funniest moments captured on film. Ever. See it just for that.
All this film needs is Corman bringing his special touch and this would be in my top 10 favorite spoof films. But as it stands, it's a pretty fun film, and best of all, it's available to watch on Hulu for free. Still, I'd give The Raven & Tales of Terror a view before seeing this.
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A truly delightful caricature.