The Comedy of Terrors/Review

Good news: we have Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff present today. Bad news? It’s not The Raven (don't cry for that’ll be for a rainy day). So instead of Roger Corman, our horror icon director of the day is Jacques Tourneur. Y’know the guy who Cat People with the cat-bus jumpscare or The Leopard Man with the cat scratch kill (one of the earliest depictions of on-screen gore). So we have more feline friends here, but used differently.

“The Comedy of Terrors” starts out on a funeral parlor that’s practically seen better days. The caretaker, Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price) is struggling to make money while unhappily married to the daughter of his ex business colleague (played by Joyce Jameson and Boris Karloff). So he and his assistant, Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre) go off to kill some rich folks and use their corpses for funeral service. But trouble pops up in the form of Basil Rathbothe who stars as the landlord, John Black. Trumbull and Felix try killing the dude, but Black just won’t stay dead. I won’t say how sans for the involvement of a cute little kitty cat.

So what about the comedy in “The Comedy of Terrors”? Well I can certainly say that it’s funny in a darkly quirky sort of fashion. Kind of like if you were to ask Edward Gorey to write for an episode of “The Honeymooners”. I.E. the scenes involving Waldo and his wife in martial spats that would give the most dysfunctional couple a run for their money. Plus the attempts to poison Boris Karloff all the while Basil Rathbone won’t meet his simple end. Let’s just say that Richard Matheson really went all out with the pitch black comedy.

Of course let’s talk about the REAL reason that we’re here: Vincent Price. Here we have a different flavor of Vincent to taste here. We don’t have the tormented outcast like in “The House of Usher” or “The Pit and the Pendulum”. It doesn’t even fit the billing of tragic villain such as with “House on Haunted Hill” or “The Abominable Dr. Phibes”. This one of the rare few movies where Price goes full blown villain without a single shred of sympathy or tragedy to his character. Typically that situation would be dire, but it works here because you’re not supposed to take “The Comedy of Terrors” seriously.

Two examples of this are the beginning scene where we are tricked to a sped up grave digging scene via Price and Peter Lorre. That right there should show that we’ve got a gut-busting farce on our hands. The next is seeing Trumbull drunk off his buttocks, kicking the cute little makeshift coffin that Felix made. Oh yea and did I mention that Joe E. Brown is here as a cemetery worker? Well nobody’s perfect (you get a cookie if get that reference).

So there’s little error to be found in “The Comedy of Terrors”. It’s ghoulishly funny and our boy, Vincent gets to go full-on wacko mode for a change. Plus I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have the cutest cat a horror-comedy could get. Even stuff like the bad opera singing of the wife can make ya laugh. I’ll give her credit though, she sounds better than most pop singers these days. Oh!

I give it 5 empty poison bottles out of 5; check it out!

Ken Hegarty is a contributor to the Grindhouse Cinema Database. You can find a list of his reviews HERE.