Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) is Frank Capra's black comedy, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Drama critic Mortimer Brewster has spent his career mocking marriage, then suddenly weds on a whim and swings by his two beloved aunts' place to break the news.

Inside that cozy Brooklyn house waits a discovery that turns his stomach: the sweet old ladies have been poisoning lonely gentlemen with elderberry wine out of pure charity, then tidily burying them in the cellar. It only gets worse from there. Cousin Teddy is convinced he's President Roosevelt and keeps digging the "Panama Canal" downstairs, while a third brother, an escaped killer whose surgeon reshaped his face to look like Boris Karloff, shows up at the door. Mortimer ricochets around the house hiding corpses, lunatics and his brand-new wife.

Adapted from Joseph Kesselring's Broadway smash, the picture was actually shot back in 1941 and held from release until the stage run finished. Cary Grant plays it at full hysterical pitch, with Peter Lorre and Raymond Massey piling on the menace. It's a benchmark for turning murder into something giddily funny, made for anyone who likes their humor pitch-dark. Stream Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) online on iFILM.