The Comedy of Terrors

After the relative success of American International Pictures’ 1963 release of Roger Corman’s The Raven, the studio quickly reunited the same fearsome trio of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff for The Comedy of Terrors, with the added attraction of Sherlock Holmes himself, Basil Rathbone. The film was scripted by Richard Matheson, who also adapted, however loosely, four other titles in Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle for AIP, including The Raven and Tales of Terror (1962), featuring Price, Lorre, and Rathbone.

Interestingly, the director selected (at Matheson’s suggestion) for this campy horror/comedy concoction was three-time Val Lewton collaborator and Out of the Past “serious” helmer Jacques Tourneur. Conceived as a spoof of the genre—with a twist on the classic grave-robbing scenario—the movie doesn’t feature much of Tourneur’s otherwise stylish filmmaking, which perhaps isn’t altogether surprising with the low budget and hectic production pace set by the studio best known for its association with Corman. All the same, the actors enjoyably ham it up, with their iconic faces and distinct voices doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Good thing, too, as both Karloff and Lorre don’t exactly look the picture of health, and at Karloff’s request, Rathbone swapped roles with him before filming began so he could play the less demanding part. And the more physical aspects of Lorre’s role were performed by a stuntman wearing a Peter Lorre mask. The Comedy of Terrors turned out to be the last of the actor’s films to be released in his lifetime, as he died the following year, a few months shy of 60. Joe E. Brown, who has an amusing cameo as the cemetery keeper, also makes his final film appearance here.

The typically spirited Price, on the other hand, had many years ahead of him. He has a ball playing the boorish drunkard Waldo Trumbull, who married Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson), the worst amateur opera singer this side of Xanadu, to gain complete control of the funeral business he co-owned with her father (Karloff), which he has since driven into the ground. Things are so dire that he commits murder to drum up business, reluctantly aided by his assistant, Felix Gillie (Lorre), who happens to be the most inept lock-picker in all of New England. Gillie is also deafened by love for his boss’s wife to the point of thinking her singing is akin to that of a nightingale. When the landlord, Mr. Black (Rathbone), demands a year’s overdue rent, Trumbull sees an opportunity to kill two birds with one pillow, except Mr. Black refuses to die—repeatedly—and seems determined to finish reciting Macbeth’s final soliloquy before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Another star of the rollicking show is veteran actor Rhubarb the cat (aka Orangey, from Breakfast at Tiffany’s), who earns a main title credit for playing the stealth Cleopatra with conviction and grace throughout the proceedings. The tabby doesn’t chew the scenery yet regularly threatens to steal the spotlight from his horror-legend co-stars—no easy feat. But he never got the opportunity to potentially reprise his role when a tepid response to The Comedy of Terrors (and Lorre’s death) killed the chances for the follow-up film Matheson envisioned that would have reunited the four main actors.