Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Joyce Jameson, Basil Rathbone
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
The depraved director of a mortuary, when business dries up, decides to murder those near death and take over their funeral arrangements, but he runs into complications when a corpse won't stay dead.
An American International release of a black comedy scripted by Richard Matheson, the picture returns Price, Lorre, and Karloff, from the similarly darkly comedic The Raven, with Price playing one of his most caddish roles. As Waldo Trumbull, Price berates his wife (Jameson), continually tries to poison his father-in-law (Karloff), and cruelly mistreats his lone employee (Lorre), whom he enlists in his murder schemes. Matheson and director Tourneur stage all sorts of comic routines throughout the picture, (some of which worked for me and some of which didn't), including wordplay, fast motion, slapstick, and Joyce Jameson's terrible singing. However, the picture really takes on a new energy when Rathbone's cataleptic John F. Black is supposedly dispatched, but keeps returning to life, and seeks revenge sword and axe in hand on Trumbull and his associates while quoting Shakespeare's Macbeth. The ensemble performs well together, but for me this isn't up to the level of their performances for AIP in The Raven or Tales Of Terror.
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