Review: Jacques Tourneur’s The Comedy of Terrors on Kino Lorber Blu-ray

The gallows silliness of Jacques Tourneur’s film wins out despite a slight collection of extras.

The Comedy of TerrorsAn atypically light-hearted film from Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie), The Comedy of Terrors is held aloft by the talents of a who’s who of horror luminaries and a witty, enthusiastically silly script by I Am Legend author Richard Matheson. Vincent Price stars as the Waldo Trumbull, a 19th-century undertaker who, when not hurling verbal insults at his untalented chanteuse wife, Amyrillis (Joyce Jameson), or attempting to poison her doddering father, Hinchley (Boris Karloff), spends his days caring for his cat and castigating his slightly hapless hired hand, Felix (Peter Lorre).

Waldo keeps the suffering mortuary business that he acquired from Amos after marrying Amyrillis afloat by reusing his only coffin, dumping the bodies after funeral-goers have departed and occasionally knocking off wealthy patriarchs. When his landlord, Mr. Black (Basil Rathbone), threatens to evict him for delinquent rent, Waldo enlists the help of Felix to murder the man in his sleep. Things don’t go quite as planned, but when Black appears to have a fatal heart attack, Waldo and Felix can’t believe their luck. Unfortunately for the pair of shysters, the man suffers from a condition that mimics death as well as a revivifying allergy to felines.

The Comedy of Terrors was released by American International Pictures at the tail-end of Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle, which the studio also produced, and the film feels like an obvious attempt to draw out the magic of those adaptations. Matheson was already a safe bet for the studio, having previously penned Tales of Terror and The Raven, but by this point he was fed up with the mania for all things Poe. As reported in Philip J. Riley’s Nightmare Series, he said, “It was the last one because I was getting tired of writing about people being buried alive, so I decided to make a joke about it.” Tourneur was then brought on at Matheson’s recommendation, but fresh blood and a farcical tone weren’t enough to put butts in seats, and The Comedy of Terrors wasn’t a big success and received mixed to negative reviews.

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Today, though, the film is hard to resist, thanks to its grave-full of pleasures. From its Gorey-esque, hand-drawn title card to its extended closing credits sequences (in which cat star Orangey, as Cleopatra, memorably slinks through a cobweb-dusted garret) and every bon mot, pratfall, and gag in between, The Comedy of Terrors is a full meal of the most deliciously spooky spoofery you’re likely to find outside of an Addams Family strip.

The film’s actors bring their comic A game to the material, Karloff especially having a ball playing against type as the doddering Hinchley. Price is at his archly venomous best chewing the script’s insults and wisecracks, while Jameson is a good sport considering that her role is a rather thankless one, and whether shrieking her way through a funeral dirge or being comically throttled, she holds her own among her legendary co-stars. But it’s Lorre and Rathbone who steal the show, the former displaying a loyalty and sweetness that takes on a patina of wistful resonance knowing that Price would eulogize his death very soon after the film’s release, and the latter giving himself over so fully to the gallows silliness of Matheson’s daffy comic world that you may find yourself confusedly intoning, “What place is this?”

Image/Sound

Kino Lorber brings The Comedy of Errors to Region 1 Blu-ray for the second time with a transfer that appears to be the same one featured in Shout! Factory’s The Vincent Price Collection II release from 2014. It’s a totally acceptable transfer, though some additional cleanup would have done this film a lot of good, as the image is littered with damage and debris. Floyd Crosby’s cinematography is noticeably soft, and there’s a drabness to the hues of Marjorie Corso’s wardrobe, but the transfer does offer some nice moments of color saturation. Shadows and darkness prove to be more problematic, with some instances of shallow blacks and irregular contrast, and as such this presentation will especially disappoint fans of Jacques Tourneur, one of cinema’s premier master of shadows. On the sound front, the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track does the trick. There’s no distortion present and the score by Les Baxter forcefully underlines the film’s gloomy buffoonery without drowning out the plum dialogue, which is perfectly clear and crisp. It’s worth noting that this is the best and most accessible version of the film, as The Vincent Price Collection II is out of print.

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Extras

The audio commentary by film scholar Tim Lucas is the only new feature included on this release and it’s a marvel. Lucas is an unabashed fan of this underrated film and his love for it is infectious. Whether speaking about Peter Lorre and Vincent Price’s sweet friendship or delving into the screen credits of the film’s feline star, Lucas provides a warm, well-researched, and compulsively listenable commentary that elevates this release. Elsewhere, Richard Matheson Storyteller: Comedy of Terrors finds the late Matheson speaking about his role and the making of the film, and it will be appealing to fans of the actor, if not those who already own the DVD from which the featurette was ported. Rounding things out is original poster art and a slew of trailers for everything from The Raven to Theater of Blood to other Kino Lorber releases.

Overall

The gallows silliness of Jacques Tourneur’s 1963 film The Comedy of Terrors wins out despite Kino Lorber’s slight collection of extras.

Score: 
 Cast: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Joyce Jameson, Joe E. Brown, Beverly Powers, Basil Rathbone  Director: Jacques Tourneur  Screenwriter: Richard Matheson  Distributor: Kino Lorber  Running Time: 82 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1963  Buy: Video

Rocco T. Thompson

Rocco is a freelance writer on film, and an Associate Producer for CreatorVC’s In Search of Darkness series.

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