1153 Arsenic and Old Lace

[Feego]

I was just reading about the play on Wikipedia, and interestingly Lugosi did indeed play the role of Jonathan on stage later in the 1940s and 50s! Also, Erich von Stroheim replaced Boris Karloff in the original Broadway run. While we're on the subject of fantasy casting, it also could have been fun if they had cast Lon Chaney Jr. and had everyone saying that he looked like the Wolf Man.

[knives]

Honestly the whole thing is endemic of the laziness of the project which was seemingly rushed so that everyone could move on to their war duties.

[swo17]

the 1955 TV adaptation (not that I've seen it) in which Karloff finally got his wish

Looking into this more, I cited 1955 because that was the first hit that came up when I originally searched for this on IMDb, but they actually show three different TV adaptations starring Karloff in the Jonathan role. A 1949 version brings back Josephine Hull (Aunt Abby). The 1955 version brings back John Alexander (Teddy), Edward Everett Horton, and Peter Lorre, while putting Orson Bean in the Cary Grant role (a Being John Malkovich connection!) And the 1962 version casts Tony Randall in the Cary Grant role and Tom Bosley as Teddy.

Here is the first half of the 1949 version and the full 1962 version

[dwk]

Arsenic and Old Beaver

[omegadirective]

Old Beaver...?
ew...

[Randall Maysin Again]

This movie sounds just antic and terrible, but I hope the Charles Dennis commentary (yes I know he's been on at least one past Criterion release, but still) heralds Criterion more consistently broadening their pool of experts a little more and using more of the specific people available who've, you know, actually written books and stuff related to the films, or are even/also related to one of the filmmakers, instead of just slapping another David Cairns video essay or something, impressive and qualified as he obviously is, on every old Hollywood/whatever release. A Sturges scholar (or hopefully, a bunch of them!) on a new Sturges release (and this is a particular pet peeve of mine), David Goodrich or Josh Kanin on The Thin Man and Adam's Rib, respectively, etc. Criterion have been okay in this regard, but I think they could do better. They've definitely done some pretty lazy, or just hapless, releases.

[tenia]

Well, like a few other big US studios licenses to Criterion, this just looks like Criterion having to do the studios' job at getting these movies released on BD and actually not doing it in a much better way than if the studios would have done it themselves. It's what I hate the most nowadays in the video market, because it makes it obvious how the studios have just quit curating most of their catalogue and the indie release doesn't even look that much better than if they would have bothered.
It's a shame but at least, these restorations can be more widely seen so there's that.