The Comedy of Terrors (1963)

In my review of The Raven a couple of days ago, I said that my first concrete impressions of that movie came from a video James Rolfe made about the old, classic horror stars battling it out. By chance, it was through that very same video that I first learned of The Comedy of Terrors at all. I knew that Vincent Price starred in a number of period horror films for American-International Pictures, many of which were based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe and often also featured Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Basil Rathbone late in their respective careers, but I never knew of this one until I saw that video. The scenes Rolfe showed was Price and Lorre desperately trying to kill of Rathbone, who won't go down, no matter what they do to him. I especially remember laughing at the moment when Price is shoving Rathbone's face into the coffin, only to recoil and yell, "Ow! He bit me! The son of a bit me!", and also from how Rolfe set the whole thing to the Benny Hill theme. Like those glimpses I got of The Raven, they were tantalizing enough that, when I found the MGM Midnight Movies double feature DVD with both of these movies, I eagerly picked it up. And, also like The Raven, The Comedy of Terrors is an absolute delight. Not only are Price, Lorre, Rathbone, and Boris Karloff on point as always, with the former two coming off as a macabre version of Abbott and Costello, and the production design superb, but it's consistently funny throughout, running the gambit of very morbid and macabre humor, slapstick, and the inherent comedy that comes from the interactions of the quirky cast of characters (it's far more successful at that than The Old Dark House, I promise you).

In 19th century New England, business has gotten so bad for the Hinchley & Trumbull Funeral Parlor that the unscrupulous Waldo Trumbull has resorted to literally dumping the bodies into the ground in order to reuse their one and only coffin. Even more reprehensible is his method of drumming up business by murdering wealthy citizens in the town and surrounding countryside. Trumbull, who's almost always drunk, heaps verbal and emotional abuse upon his wife, Amaryllis, and often tries to poison the senile old Hinchley under the guise of giving him medicine, forces his assistant, a wanted fugitive named Felix Gillie, to assist in his crimes, much to Gillie's disdain. When Trumbull's landlord, John F. Black, threatens to evict him if he doesn't pay his rent, which is overdue by a whole year, he decides to murder Phipps, a wealthy shipping merchant. Despite a lot of problems, most of them caused by Gillie being a clumsy pick-lock and loud intruder, Trumbull does manage to murder Phipps in his sleep and then arrives fortuitously the next morning to apply for the job of burying him. Unfortunately for him, Phipps' young widow skips town with his fortune and doesn't pay for the funerary service. When Trumbull receives a letter from Black, saying he's going to throw him out by the next morning if the rent isn't paid, he decides to make him his next victim. Heading to his house that night, Gillie is forced to enter through an upstairs window when all the doors and lower windows are locked from the inside. But, before he can open the front door for Trumbull, Gillie is confronted by Black, who gets overexcited after reading from Macbeth, and appears to die from a heart attack. Once he's pronounced dead, they then take him to the funeral parlor, where he revives, as he suffers from catalepsy and has before been mistaken to be dead. They manage to keep him from escaping and force him into a coffin, a struggle wherein he, again, appears to die. Following his funeral, Black is "laid to rest" in his family crypt, and Trumbull and the others celebrate the lucrative payday they receive as a result. However, Gillie, tired of Trumbull's abuse of both him and Amaryllis, whom he has feelings for, decides to run away with her. Even worse for Trumbull and everybody else, Black still may not be as dead as he seems.

In another link between the two films, The Comedy of Terrors was conceived by the heads of AIP as a follow-up to The Raven, which had been quite successful for them. While Roger Corman had no involvement with the film, it did reunite the three principal actors, as well as writer Richard Matheson. Matheson was the one who suggested to the producers the idea of Jacques Tourneur directing the film, as Tourneur had directed the Twilight Zone episode he'd written called Night Call. It would prove to be the penultimate feature film for Tourneur, who not only directed three of Val Lewton's horror movies for RKO in 40's but had also done the well-known movie Night of the Demon in 1957. By this point, he was mainly working in television, directing episodes of Bonanza, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, General Electric Theater, and Adventures in Paradise. His last movie was 1965's War-Gods of the Deep (also known as City Under the Sea), a sci-fi adventure that also starred Vincent Price. Following that and an episode of T.H.E. Cat in 1966, Tourneur retired and returned to France, where he died in 1977, at the age of 73. The Comedy of Terrors was also the last screenplay Matheson wrote for AIP. He did try to commission another followup film with the cast, Sweethearts and Horrors, which would have also added Tallulah Bankhead into the mix (Matheson would later write the Hammer film, Fanatic, aka Die! Die! My Darling!, which was Bankhead's final feature film), but unfortunately, The Comedy of Terrors didn't do that well, so it was scrapped. It probably also didn't help that Peter Lorre died just two months after the movie entered general release.

Vincent Price played all sorts of both diabolical villains and sympathetic characters throughout his long career, but the best way to describe his role of Waldo Trumbull in this film is as a total bastard. He's a mean-spirited, unscrupulous, verbally and emotionally abusive drunkard, one who's horrible to his wife, Amaryllis, freely admitting that he despises her and only courted her to gain control of her father's funeral business, actively tries to poison said father, and manipulates and bullies his assistant, Felix Gillie, into doing what he wants through threats of turning him into the police, as he's a fugitive from the law. Even worse, because of the funeral parlor's lack of business, he cheaply reuses their sole coffin and unceremoniously dumps the bodies of the deceased into the ground. But, most appallingly of all, he drums up business by murdering the wealthiest of the town's citizens and applies for the job of burying them. And whenever he does get a big payday, he lets none of the others have any of it and wastes most or all of it on booze, being almost perpetually drunk, even he's trying to break into a victim's house. Just as hypocritical as he is nasty, he has the gall to be angry when the widow of a man he murdered makes off with all of his fortune without paying for the funerary services, complaining that no one, especially women, can be trusted, and also calls John F. Black "distrustful" when he learns the doors and first floor windows are all bolted on the inside. Speaking of which, having failed to pay his rent for a year, Trumbull decides to kill Black, his landlord, and profit from his considerable wealth. While he does manage to proceed with the funeral and get his money, it all comes crashing down on him when the still alive and now thoroughly deranged Black escapes his family crypt and breaks into his house with an axe. Though he does seem to finally put him down with some gunshots, Trumbull then has to deal with Amaryllis when she accuses him of killing Gillie, whom she was planning to run away with. He actually strangles and apparently kills her, only for Gillie to awaken from being knocked out and engage him in a sword-fight that seemingly ends in his death. By the end of the ordeal, Trumbull, knowing the police are about to be sent after him, collapses in defeat, unaware that Gillie and Amaryllis are both still alive and do run off together. Though Trumbull does escape being put in jail, he doesn't escape retribution.

In one of his last films (he only appeared in two more before he died in March of 1964, and both of them were released posthumously), Peter Lorre plays Trumbull's much put upon and more moral sidekick, Felix Gillie. Trumbull, whom Gillie continuously calls "Tremble" and, when corrected, answers, "I said Mr. Tremble," uses his history as a former bank-robber who escaped from prison as a means of manipulating him into doing what he wants, threatening to turn him into the police, as well as blame him for the murders he's committed. Though his motivation is to make use of his supposed lock-picking and burgling skills, Gillie isn't really that effective at breaking and entering, and his clumsiness often proves to be a major liability for both of them. Moreover, Gillie has a disdain for Trumbull's disrespect for the dead and his murderous method of drumming up business, although he does help him when Black proves to be a real danger in exposing them when he attempts to escape the funeral parlor. What Gillie hates Trumbull the most for, though, is his mistreatment of Amaryllis, whom he has feelings for (he's also badly tone deaf, as he likens her horrendous, shrill singing to the sound of a nightingale or an angel). By the end of the movie, he convinces her to run off with him, but that plan gets sidetracked when Black escapes his family crypt and breaks into their house. Gillie is seemingly killed in the mayhem when he trips down the stairs, but is revealed to have merely been knocked unconscious. When he awakens and sees that Trumbull seemingly strangled Amaryllis to death, he attacks and engages him in a sword fight, only to get knocked out again. Fortunately, both he and Amaryllis reawaken, see that each other is still alive, and, in the end, escape to a happier life.

Although Trumbull's comparing her singing to, "The vocal emissions of a laryngitic crow," aren't exactly far off, you still have to feel bad for his suffering wife, Amaryllis (Joyce Jameson). She's very lovely, for one thing, and, though she argues back at Trumbull just as ferociously as he does with her, she's clearly a broken and horribly unhappy person who desperately wants somebody to love her. Trumbull's verbal and emotional abuse, consisting of him admitting he was only interested in her in order to gain a foothold in her father's funeral business, mocking her ruthlessly, and often screaming at her to shut up and get away from him, often reduces her to tears and he responds to this with only more disdain, while her father is too senile and oblivious to be aware of it or anything else. Moreover, he's constantly trying to poison her father and she has to keep on her toes to prevent Hinchley from drinking it, as he thinks it's his medicine. By the end of the movie, when they've received a lot of money from John F. Black's funeral, Amaryllis, who's not at all blind to Felix Gillie's affections toward her, gives Trumbull one more chance to be a proper, loving husband, a chance he willingly and hatefully blows. With that, she decides to run away with Gillie, only for Black to break into the house with an axe and nearly kill her. After the ensuing chaos, she's seemingly killed by Trumbull when he strangles her after she accuses him of killing the unconscious Gillie but, in the end, she and Gillie are able to flee the scene together before the police arrive.

Boris Karloff was originally meant to play John F. Black but, because of his bad back and terrible arthritis, they instead gave him the role of Amaryllis' father and Trumbull's former business partner, Hinchley. It's kind of a thankless role, as Hinchley is so old, hard of hearing, and senile that he comprehends little of the madness going on around him. He understands that Trumbull is often drunk but, other than that, not much. In the opening scene alone, when Amaryllis tries to make him aware of the awful things Trumbull is saying about the two of them, he thinks she's asking for sugar, for whatever reason, and she often has to keep him from obliviously drinking the poison Trumbull passes off as medicine, prompting him to complain about it and say she doesn't care about him. When Trumbull is bitching about Mrs. Phipps having taken off without paying his funerary expenses and is yelling at Amaryllis as well, while Gillie seethes over this, Hinchley goes on about the ways various famous figures and cultures have been buried, embalmed, or preserved their dead. But, like he always did, Karloff manages to make the most of his role, with his best scene being when he gives a hilariously stammering, absentminded eulogy at Black's funeral. And while he sleeps through the entirety of the climax, he does wake up long enough at the end to unknowingly give Trumbull exactly what he deserves.

The funniest character in the movie for me is Basil Rathbone as John F. Black, Esq. He makes quite a first impression when he tells Trumbull he must come up with the year's rent within a day or he's going to be out on the street in the most elegant, Shakespearean way possible, but where he really becomes entertaining is when Trumbull decides to murder him. When Gillie finally manages to sneak into his house, he finds Black, wearing a red smoking jacket and nightcap, excitedly reading Macbeth while sitting in bed, saying the dialogue as if he were actually performing it on stage. He gets so into it that he jumps out of bed, grabs an actual sword off the wall, runs out into the hall outside his bedroom, and comes close to killing Gillie without knowing he's even there. When he does come across him, the shock of a stranger in his house causes him to seemingly die from a heart attack. But, not knowing that he suffers from catalepsy and is believed to have died several times before, Trumbull and Gillie take his body to the funeral parlor, where he revives and tries to escape. He especially gives them a lot of trouble when they attempt to force him into the coffin, proving to be a lot more energetic, strong, and agile than he seemed (even though he was only a few years younger than Karloff, Rathbone is, indeed, quite spry here). Trumbull seems to finally do him in with a whack to the head with a mallet, followed by him being bound and gagged inside the coffin, and they have his funeral and lay him to rest in his family crypt... only for him to escape, horrifying the cemetery keeper when he sees him. Now completely deranged, Black heads to Trumbull's home, grabs an axe from outside, sneaks into the house, horrifies and nearly kills Amaryllis, and chases Trumbull and Gillie around, hacking through doors and furniture while yelling out random lines from Macbeth. Even when Trumbull shoots him several times, Black manages to give the entire "tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy before seemingly finally dying. And yet, at the very end of the movie, as if he were some Shakespeare-spouting Michael Myers, you see that he's still not dead!

The aforementioned cemetery keeper is played by popular comic actor Joe E. Brown, whom you'd probably remember from the movie Some Like It Hot, which he ended with the line, "Well, nobody's perfect," after Jack Lemmon finally reveals himself to be a guy in drag. This proved to be Brown's final film appearance, and it's little more than a cameo (or a "guest star," as the credits refer to it; am I the only one who's bothered when that credit is used for a movie than a TV show?), with him only having two scenes, but he makes the most of it, speaking in an Irish accent and coming off as jolly and friendly as he often did onscreen. His most memorable moment is when he hears Black yelling inside the coffin in the crypt and goes to investigate. He acts rather nonchalant over the notion that someone is yelling inside a crypt, talking about how impatient he is, and tries to reason with Black, saying he must sleep like the other bodies in the tombs, before he bursts out of the coffin and storms out of the crypt. The keeper gets knocked to the floor in the process and revives long enough to let out a horrified scream before passing out.

One other memorable character is Mrs. Phipps (Beverly Powers, who's credited as "Beverly Hills,"), the young, beautiful, and rather busty wife of the elderly shipping merchant, Phipps. When Trumbull and Gillie break into Phipps' house in order to murder him, the former is quite surprised when he finds her sleeping in her own bedroom and is almost tempted to take advantage of the situation, but decides not to. After he's murdered Phipps and then "conveniently" shows up to apply for the job of burying him, he attempts to comfort Mrs. Phipps but his way of speaking is full of such fancy vernacular that she twice responds to what he says with a confused, "What?" And while she's crying over what's happened to her husband, she's obviously not too broken up about it, as she doesn't show up for the funeral, having run off to Boston with all of her husband's money and planning to leave for Europe, according to the one servant Trumbull finds still there when he arrives at the now empty house. Methinks Phipps' money was the sole reason why she was married to him in the first place, don't you?

And I'd be remissed not to mention the presence of Orangey, or Rhubarb, as he's called in the credits, a tabby cat who often appeared in movies during this time, having previously featured in Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Diary of Anne Frank (supposedly; reports of how many movies this particular cat actually appeared in are sketchy). As Amaryllis' cat, Cleopatra, he doesn't do that much in the film rather than just act as a constant presence, although he does, for some reason, accompany Trumbull and Gillie when they go to murder Black. Most significantly, he appears to act as a catalyst for Black's revivals, as he snuffs, wiggles his nose, and sneezes whenever Cleopatra is close by, signifying that he might have a cat allergy. And the film's ending credits focus on the cat just wandering around the house's basement, with no significance to it at all.

Coming off the lameness of The Old Dark House, it's refreshing to talk about a movie where the humor works as well as it does here. In fact, The Comedy of Terrors succeeds at every type of humor that movie attempted and failed at, right down to the quirky characters and their interactions. Not only do all of these actors play their parts to perfection but their chemistry is just marvelous and makes for some very funny scenes, be it when Trumbull, Amaryllis, Hinchley, and/or Gillie argue at the dinner table, Trumbull attempts to put on a very fake face

of compassion and class to the bereaved, or Trumbull and Gillie have to contend with Black. The best examples, though, are the many scenes between Trumbull and Gillie, as Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, again, play off each other wonderfully. Like I said earlier, their dynamic make them something of a macabre, nastiy version of Abbott and Costello, with Trumbull being the tall, short-tempered leader who pushes around the smaller and more heavyset Gillie. Be it Trumbull

manipulating and physically abusing Gillie, Trumbull getting aggravated at Gillie's clumsiness and ineptitude, the two of them chasing down or running from Black, or even moments where they have candid conversations, like when Trumbull laments having to give up his prized coffin for Black's body in his family crypt and they discuss why people should be buried in the ground instead, they're a lot of fun and it sucks that Lorre's untimely death kept them from appearing together in more such movies.

In addition to their interactions, each main character gets to have his or her individual moments to be as quirky and charming as possible. Trumbull is often staggering around dead drunk, which makes him even nastier than when he's sober, while Gillie proves to be as lousy a coffin-maker as he is a criminal. Aside from his complaining about not being allowed to take his "medicine," Hinchley's best moment is when he presides over Black's funeral, giving this mumbled, stammering eulogy: "My friends, we have gathered

ourselves together within these bog-grieved walls to pay homage to the departed soul of... what's his name, whom the pious and unyielding fates have chosen to pluck from the very prime of his existence and place in the bleak sarcophagus of all eternity. Hm, that's pretty good!... And so, my friends, we find ourselves gathered around the bier of Mrs... er... Mr... ou now whom... this litter of sorrow, this cairn, this cromlech, this dread dochma, this gart, this mastaba, this sorrowing tope, this unhappy tumulus, this, this... what is the

word?... this... er, coffin! Never could think of that word. Requiescat in Pace, Mr... um... Mr... the memory of your good deeds will not perish with your untimely sepulture. Within the hearts of those who love you, you will live on." As sweet as she is, Amaryllis' singing is so shrill and piercing that her high notes not only break glass but also shake furniture, kill flowers(!), and, in one scene, blow Trumbull's hat right off his head. Her singing at Black's funeral is especially hilarious in how

horrendous it is, prompting a woman to comment when she's done, "You know, if Mr. Black wasn't dead already, that note would kill him." And, of course, Black himself is able to show off his spryness, agility, and dexterity, as well as how lethal he can be with an axe, all while spouting off Shakespeare, and Basil Rathbone does it masterfully.

The effects of Amaryllis' awful singing is an example of a more cartoonish, slapstick, madcap type of humor that also permeates the movie. It opens with Trumbull and Gillie quickly dumping a body into a freshly-dug grave and covering it up, only sped up and played to the type of comedic music you'd hear in a silent melodrama or comedy. From there, you have the two of them bungling around when they enter or try to enter potential victims' houses, the struggle they go through with Black at the funeral parlor, especially

when they try to force him into the coffin and he fights tooth and nail to get out, and the complete absurdity of the climax, where the insane and seemingly unkillable Black breaks into Trumbull's house and chases him and Gillie around with an axe. The stuff with Black also plays into the inevitable and expected macabre humor from a movie about an unscrupulous funeral director. Surprisingly, though, there's not as much comedy derived from the characters dealing with and mishandling dead bodies as you might think, with

most of that specifically coming from their ordeal with Black, like when they clumsily bring him to the parlor following his apparent death and when Trumbull makes sure he's dead before they hold the funeral. Otherwise, the dark humor comes about from the very idea of Trumbull attempting to drum up business by murdering people, the lengths him and Gillie go to do so, him getting angry when people prove to be "distrustful" or untrustworthy in their own right, and when he talks about his own feelings regarding

death, feeling dead people belong in the ground, and yet, is horrified when Gillie says they also fertilize the plants as a result. Also, during the climax, there are many instances where the characters, and the audience, go back and forth, thinking each other is dead, only for them to be proven wrong each and every time. But the best bit of macabre humor comes at the very end, when the ever oblivious Hinchley decides to give Trumbull some of his "medicine" and then doesn't see him drop dead from the poison, complaining about not being able to have any of it himself, saying he's the one who needs it most

Like many of these color period pieces AIP produced around this time, The Comedy of Terrors is a pretty nice-looking movie, with a fairly lovely color palette, one where the reds, like Black's smoking jacket, especially pop. It's also well shot by Jacques Tourneur and cinematographer Floyd Crosby, with the best-looking scene being the opening in the foggy graveyard, which looks like a color version of a scene from the classic Universal movies. You can also see Tourneur employing a bit of what he learned from Val Lewton in the

cinematography, as there are plenty of scenes where the blacks and shadows are plentiful, albeit not as effective as they would have been had the movie had been done in black-and-white (and was also a serious horror film). As per usual with such low budget films of the time, a handful of scenes were shot day-for-night, but the way that photography looks here, with a lot of deep blue in it, gives them an otherworldly, somewhat surreal look and feel.

Like The Raven, while there are some occasional instances of location-work, likely augmented with matte paintings, this is almost entirely a studio-bound movie. The wide shots of the town, the graveyards, and the exteriors of the buildings are clearly done either on a backlot or interior sets with backdrops but, again, with these kinds of Gothic settings, I feel that artificiality contributes to the mood. As for the other sets, they're not much to write home about, being merely functional rather than truly spectacular. For instance, the interiors of

the Trumbull house, such as the dining room, the parlor, the upstairs bedroom, the dimly lit basement where Gillie constructs coffins (which has two different staircases leading outside and up into the house), and the somewhat small funeral parlor itself, decked mostly in red, do their job but there's little else to say about them. The same also goes for the interiors of the big, wealthy homes of both Mr. Phipps, the most notable feature of which is its big foyer with a line of marble statues on pedestals going up the side of the staircase and which you see completely

cleaned out when Phipps' widow skips town, and Mr. Black, the most of which you see is Black's lovely bedroom, which also has some furnished chairs, a sofa, a fireplace, and a couple of swords above the mantle, and the hallway right outside it, with some red candles and a screen Gillie takes cover behind. And finally, Black's family crypt, while not much of a set on the inside, obviously, does have an atmospheric exterior when combined with the graveyard set, full of the many dead trees and headstones, and the flashing lightning effects.

Other than some occasional matte paintings, possible miniatures, and physical effects like the shaking furniture, exploding glass, and dying flowers that come about from Amaryllis' singing, there isn't much effects work to be found here. There is, however, some noteworthy editing, like the age-old method of sped up action to make something look funnier and, as they did with the titular bird in The Raven, shot manipulation and repetition in order to get the necessary actions and reactions from the cat, which you can recognize due to how the picture quality always becomes slightly faded.

As I've said, the movie opens on the solemn scene of a burial taking place in a fog enshrouded graveyard, but the music score lets us know that this mood won't be sustained for long. Looking down at the coffin, Waldo Trumbull and Felix Gillie seem as sad as the mourners. But, once the bereaved widow and the others walk away and are out of sight, the two of them quickly get to work, dumping the body out of the coffin and into the grave. Trumbull wipes down the coffin's lid and he

and Gillie quickly fill in the grave, carry the coffin over to their carriage, and slide it in the back. They then slowly ride off. Like the previous couple of movies, the opening title sequence is somewhat unique and elaborate. It starts off with small portraits of the main actors in their various roles, and when the title comes onscreen, it and, after some more portraits of Joe E. Brown, "Beverly Hills," Rhubarb the cat, and Basil Rathbone, the rest of the credits play over a mural of some of the

most memorable scenes: Hinchley presiding over the funeral, Amaryllis singing, Gillie and Trumbull trying to keep Black in the coffin, and a woman, whom I assume to be the treacherous Mrs. Phipps, running away with a briefcase. Once the credits are done, Cleopatra is shown running home to the Hinchley and Trumbull Funeral Parlor. She goes into the cellar through the open shutters and heads down the stairs, only to be sent running up into the house when Gillie snaps a rope as he works on a coffin. As he does so, an argument can be heard

upstairs between Trumbull and Amaryllis, the former constantly insulting her and telling her to shut up, while the latter criticizes him for his drinking and overall nastiness. Cut to upstairs and, following a sight gag of a sign on the wall that lists three disciplines that are not to be found in this house, Cleopatra is shown sitting in an empty seat at the table, watching the madness play out. Twice, Amaryllis tries to make her oblivious father realize what Trumbull is saying but the senile and nearly deaf old man merely thinks she asking for him to

pass the sugar; all the while, Gillie feels bad about what Amaryllis is being put through. Trumbull also jokes about giving Hinchley his "medicine," pulling out a small bottle full of poison, the sight of which makes Cleopatra gulp, and chuckling in a sinister manner. Amaryllis then proclaims, "Merely for purposes of enlightenment, Mr. Trumbull, I could have been the greatest opera singer in the world," to which Trumbull sneers, "What world? Would the vocal emissions of a laryngitic crow be qualifications? Yes, then maybe you could have been." She proceeds to call him everything you can call a drunkard, to which he exclaims, "Your mouth, madam, SHUT IT!" Downstairs, Gillie has just finished his coffin, commenting, "Anybody could be proud to rest in this coffin."

Amaryllis further lambasts Trumbull, yelling, "My father had a thriving undertaking business until you proceeded to get a hold of it and run it into the ground," to which he counters, "Where else? 'A thriving business.' The receipts of which he used to cram this house with monstrosities!" He gets up, puts on his coat, and starts to head downstairs into the basement, when he has this exchange with Amaryllis: "If my father chose to spend his hard-earned money on the collection of curious

objects..." "He did more than collect curious objects, madam! He also fathered one." "I despise you! Demon rum will get you yet!" "I look forward to that day with keen anticipation, madam." He stomps on down into the cellar, and upon hearing her sobbing upstairs, grumbles, "What I wouldn't do to get her down here as a customer." Staggering from drunkenness, he explodes when Gillie calls him Tremble, yelling, "Will you learn to pronounce my name correctly?!", to which he responds, "I

said, 'Tremble.'" He then notices the very primitive-looking coffin Gillie has just finished. While Gillie says he doesn't look to see somebody buried "naked," Trumbull growls, "No one in their right mind would be caught dead in that thing." With one swift kick, he causes the coffin to fall apart, devastating Gillie, and he comments, "How gratifying, Mr. Gillie, to have a... a 'master craftsman' in one's employ. Well, I'm going out and drink myself into a state of stupefaction." He grabs his hat and leaves through the shutters, but when he

rounds the corner of his house, he has the misfortune of running into his landlord, John F. Black, Esq. He tries to turn and walk the other way, but Black spots and stops him, telling him, "A boon, sir. A trifling matter of a year's rent, in arrears," leading to this exchange: "Has it been a year?" "Each and every unpaid day of it." "Well, what do you know about that..." "And, as much as I regret to dun, dear sir, it is unhappily incumbent upon me, as owner of these premises, to regard your monetary dereliction as, shall we say, inconvenient

to my purposes?" Trumbull goes to speak, when Black reveals that his cane contains a sharp blade, which he removes partially and which Trumbull finds is razor sharp when he touches it. Black continues, "So vastly inconvenient, sir, one might add, that should the debt remain outstanding for as much as 24 hours more, I fear that, um, legal machinery must by force be set in motion." He goes on to tell Trumbull he must then face the prospect of living on the street and, upon ensuring he's made himself clear, walks off, bidding

Trumbull good day. Trumbull sneers, "And good day to you... you penny-pinching old pig." He's about to walk on down the street, when Amaryllis calls to him. Despite her being in tears, all he can do is snarl, "And as for you, you sniveling shhhtt...", only to storm off, walking into some trashcans and knocking a passerby to the ground. 

Closing the door, Amaryllis laments having given up her potential operatic career for him. She then sees that Cleopatra is lapping up the milk in her father's cup, as he's fallen asleep. She promptly picks up the cat and puts her down on the floor. Gillie comes upstairs under the pretense of getting a glass of water, but makes his anger about Trumbull's mistreatment of her clear. He's then shown chopping firewood and brings it into the house, as Amaryllis gives her father some soup.

She starts humming and singing an opera song, prompting Gillie to sit down and listen. He describes it as beautiful, and it is... at first. But, as she goes on and gets more into it, her voice becomes higher and more piercing. Moreover, she forgets what she's doing and does a twirl, flinging some stew from her ladle right into her father's face. She then finishes with a high note that rattles her father's cup and some glasses up on a shelf, before sending Cleopatra running and the glasses

breaking. Trumbull walks in at that moment, only for the noise to blow his hat right off his head and prompt him to yell at her to shut up. When she does, her father, unaware of what just happened, wipes his face and murmurs, "Must've been an earthquake." Trumbull tells Gillie to meet him in the parlor and he drops his firewood and storms on in. Hinchley makes a comment about Trumbull being drunk and he, in turn, tells him it's time for his "medicine," pouring the poison into his cup of milk. Before he can drink it, Amaryllis takes the

cup away, telling Trumbull she's not going to let him do it. Trumbull laughs, "Hope springs eternal in the human, eh...", and walks into the parlor, while Hinchley complains, "Why do you always take my medicine away?! Don't you care nothin' about my health?!", before sobbing and slamming the table with a butter-knife.

In the parlor, Trumbull tells Gillie to take a seat, shoving him and causing him to fall over a chair. Lighting a candle on the table, he tells Gillie it's time for them to "acquire a bit of income" by heading out that night. Knowing what he's getting at, and horrified that they're to do it again so soon, Gillie asks, "What if I refuse?" Trumbull informs him, "If you refuse, Mr. Gillie (which possibility I find most remote), however, if you refuse, Mr. Gillie, the local constabulary shall forthwith be

apprised of... sundry, illicit peccadillos which one Mr. G has been involved." He counters, "What if I tell them the truth and tell 'em that it was your idea in the first place?", but Trumbull says, "Mr. Gillie... Felix... friend... I put it to you, who in your discerning estimation do you think they're most likely to believe? Hmm? Mr. W. Trumbull, respected citizen and entrepreneur of death, or Mr. Felix Gillie... wanted fugitive and confessed bank robber?!" Gillie exclaims, "I've never confessed!... They just proved it." Frustrated, he makes the

vague threat of, "One of these days," but when Trumbull challenges him on it, he backs off and, defeated, says, "Nothing," to which Trumbull counters, "Exactly, Mr. Gillie. Nothing." Glancing at the clock, Trumbull suggests, "Shall we say, uh, midnight?" With no other choice, Gillie agrees to it and Trumbull says, "You are most accommodating, Mr. Gillie. Until midnight, then." 

Come midnight, as Hinchley sleeps upstairs with Cleopatra lying in his lap and Amaryllis sleeps alone in her bed, moaning in comfort, Trumbull and Gillie head out of town. Drinking whiskey, Trumbull tells Gillie of the man they're going to call on, describing him as a "perfectly delightful old gentlemen" who owns merchant vessels that operate out of Boston and lives in a lovely, old house up on Winkle Road. Gillie reaches the fork leading onto said road and takes it. They promptly

come upon the house in question and park near the door. When they disembark, Gillie tries to stay behind with the carriage, but Trumbull reminds him he needs his lock-picking expertise and orders him to come on. They sneak along the front of the house and head toward a French window off to the side. Gillie attempts to get to work, trying to find the right pick, when Trumbull asks him if he tried the knob. He does, and it turns out to be open. Both of them sneak in, Trumbull telling Gillie to be

quiet, when he steps on a particularly squeaky floorboard and then fumbles and drops his tools out of their bag, which clang loudly on the floor. Despite this, no one comes down, and Trumbull comments they must be as deaf as Hinchley if they didn't hear that. Gillie gets frustrated and flings the now empty bag to the floor, and the two of them shush each other as they head through the foyer and towards the stairs. Gillie bangs his foot into something, and then, when they get halfway up the stairs, he sits down, saying he doesn't like what

they're up to. Exasperated, Trumbull steps on his hand, and after telling him to be quiet when he yells, orders him to get up and continue following him. When they reach the top of the stairs, another floorboard squeaks loudly. Trumbull swings around and yells at Gillie for making more noise, when he backs into a podium housing a marble head behind him, causing it to fall and creating a domino effect where the whole line of them falls. Both of them cover their ears and hide up against the wall, watching in horror as they all crash to the floor.

Amazingly, nobody in the house heard that row, either. Fed up, Trumbull grabs Gillie, pulls him over to a chair, and sits him down, growling, "Now you sit there, Mr. Gillie, and don't you make a sound, Mr. Gillie. As a matter of fact, don't you even breathe, Mr. Gillie. Do you understand me?" Gillie responds with a sharp inhalation and Trumbull, satisfied, continues on down the hall, shushing Gillie when he breathes too loud for him.

Coming across a door, he opens it and is quite surprised to find a young and very good-looking woman sleeping in there. Her beauty almost tempts him but he then remembers why he's there and ducks out, as she moans in her sleep, suggesting she's having a very nice dream. He creeps back down the hall, glancing at Gillie who's still sitting there, not making a sound (he gives him a small wave but Trumbull has a "whatever" expression on his face), and goes through another door. There, he

finds his target: old Mr. Phipps, snoring away in his bed. Gillie then exhales loudly and Phipps stirs a bit, but doesn't wake up. Motioning for Gillie to be quiet, Trumbull walks through the door and towards Phipps' bedside. Taking a pillow, and patting it on each side, he promptly smothers the old man. Outside, Gillie listens to Phipps' muffled screaming and gagging, letting out an exhale when the sound stops. Removing the pillow, Trumbull looks at the result of his handiwork before slowly

leaving the room. He tells Gillie, "Fet et complet, Monsieur Gillie," and he quickly tips his hat to the deceased. Come morning, the two of them are waiting in their carriage from nearby for someone to discover the body. Trumbull, as usual, is drunk, and sings in a slurred manner, ending his little ditty with the horrific line, "Rapping, rapping, rapping gently with a hammer on a baby's skull." Up in the driver's seat, Gillie is unable to sleep, knowing what Trumbull has done, and though he offers him some whiskey, he turns it down. A woman's scream

sounds from the house up ahead and Trumbull declares, "Well, thus we end our lonely vigil, Mr. Gillie. Forward!" Gillie brings the carriage up to the house and Trumbull jumps out of the back, as a maid comes running out the door. Seeing him, she runs up to him and he, naturally, plays the part of a concerned passerby. Though she says she's going to fetch the doctor, he says he can help and she shows him inside. On the way in, he signals for Gillie to pull the carriage around the back, which he very reluctantly does.

After putting his ear to Mr. Phipps' chest, and then placing it elsewhere just to make absolutely sure, Trumbull tells Mrs. Phipps, who's standing with him and Gillie at her late husband's bedside, "I am afraid, madam, that he has made his final crossing to that stygian shore." Mrs. Phipps, however, has no clue what he just said, and Trumbull bluntly clarifies, "He's dead." As she dabs her tears with a handkerchief, he adds, "Allow me, madam, in this moment of your most desolate bereavement, to lift

from your sorrow-laden shoulders the burdens and tasks of exequiem sepulcher." Again, she doesn't know what he said, and he clarifies, "I'll bury him for you," adding that he runs a funeral parlor and says, "As we like to say to those we serve, 'When loved ones lie on the lonely couch of everlasting sleep, let Hinchley and Trumbull draw the covenant." Mrs. Phipps remarks on how tender it is, as Trumbull leads her out the door. Before he ducks out, he orders Gillie, "Remove the carcass."

Next, we have the funeral, with Amaryllis playing the organ while Gillie pumps it, but the problem is everyone is there, except for Mrs. Phipps. As Trumbull wonders where she is, Amaryllis and Gillie, who have been playing for a long time while everyone's been waiting, are just about exhausted, the former horribly mangling the keys. She stops but Trumbull yells at her to keep playing; when she does, the organ sounds horribly strained. Hinchley shows up, asking if it's time for his eulogy, but Trumbull shouts, "No, not now, you old fool! We

have to wait for the damned widow to get here." Hinchley, of course, didn't hear half of that, and as he looks at Phipps lying in his coffin, comments, "He does look very natural." Having lost all patience, Trumbull drives out to the Phipps house. When he knocks on the door, he's greeted by the maid from before, who tells him that no one is home, including Mrs. Phipps. That's when Trumbull sees that all of the furniture in the foyer and the study over to the left are gone. The maid tells him that Mrs. Phipps took everything,

including her husband's fortune, with her to Boston. Trumbull demands to know about his fee and the maid simply answers, "Oh, sir, I don't know. She didn't even pay me my wages." Left alone in the barren foyer, Trumbull asks, "Is there no morality left in this world?", as a light passes over him, as though he were making a profound speech or statement.

Next is another nasty row at the dinner table, with Trumbull pouring glass after glass, drunkenly complaining about women, saying, "As soon put your trust in them as put a pistol to your head!" Amaryllis tries to interject but he continually yells at her to be quiet. Seeing this, Gillie becomes all the more enraged, gripping his butter-knife at one point in a threatening manner, but he doesn't follow up on it when Trumbull asks, "Well?" All throughout this, Hinchley interjects with random

non-sequiturs: "Ben Johnson, buried standing up... Edward III, buried with his horse... Alexander the Great, embalmed in honey, so they say. Egyptians used to hollow them out and pour 'em full of resin... Egyptians used to, uh, bend them in two and stick them in a vase of salt water... Give them false eyes." While Gillie stifles a chuckle, Amaryllis is disgusted and Trumbull is just aggravated, as always. He offers Hinchley his "medicine," and while Amaryllis warns him not to,

the old man obliviously says, "Yank their brains out with a hook." Amaryllis yells, "Father!", and Hinchley, as per usual, gives her the bowl of sugar and tells her she eats too much of it. Trumbull goes to pour the poison into his cup but Amaryllis stops him, threatening to have him arrested. Ignoring her, Trumbull orders Gillie to join him in the parlor again. Hinchley complains, "There you go, keeping my medicine away from me again! I don't believe you care whether your poor old father lives or dies!" In the parlor, Trumbull tells Gillie the two of

them are going out again, much to Gillie's horror: "What if the same thing happens that happened to us the other night?" "Well, it's never happened before, has it?" "But what if it does happen? Are we going to go out another night and another night and look for another man and another man and..." "We'll pick someone who isn't married, Mr. Gillie." "And how are you going to do that, huh? Wake up everybody before you do that horrible thing to him and ask him whether he's married? Or are you just going to kill off any old man that comes your

way?" Before Trumbull can answer that, there's a knock at the door. It turns out to be Mr. Black's servant, who has a message from him. Trumbull promptly yanks the letter out of his hand and slams the door in his face. Taking it out of the envelope and looking at it, Trumbull smiles, rejoins Gillie in the parlor, and shows it to him: "Dear sir, if total payment for the past year's rent is not received by morning, I shall instigate proceedings for eviction." Gillie quickly realizes what Trumbull means when he reads this message with such giddiness, as he states, "To, uh, paraphrase the venerable adage, we shall kill two birds with one... pillow."

And so, they're off again that night, this time with Cleopatra joining them. Though Gillie says they can't go on murdering people, Trumbull isn't discouraged, saying the town is sizable enough. He then says that with Black, there's to be a double profit. Gillie comments, "There must be a little more honest way to conduct a funeral business," to which Trumbull counters, "I might expect that kind of talk from a criminal." Coming upon Black's house, Trumbull tells Gillie to stop, and he sharply

makes the horses come to a halt. They disembark and walk towards the house, with Cleopatra following after them. However, Gillie finds it difficult to pick the lock on a door off to the side, and after a lot of struggling, figures it may be bolted on the inside (which it is). Though Trumbull isn't prone to believe him, he orders him to try all the windows, despite Gillie saying it's not his specialty. Some time later, Gillie returns to Trumbull, who's drinking, naturally, and tells him that even the

windows are bolted on the inside. Undeterred, Trumbull realizes that Gillie was referring to the windows on the first floor. Walking around the length of the house, with Cleopatra following, Trumbull stops, delighted when he sees a second story window that's wide open. Despite Gillie's complaints, Trumbull orders him to get up there. Gillie walks up to the side of the wall and tries to jump up and grab onto the edge, but he's too short and ends up flat on his back after one unsuccessful jump. Irritated, telling him he's not good at

anything except bungling, Trumbull offers to give him a boost, only to become aggravated when Gillie puts his foot in his hands and finds he stepped in something quite nasty. Wiping his hands and telling Gillie to clean his shoes off, he then allows him to climb up onto his back and grab the ledge. He steps on Trumbull's shoulders, as he tries to boost him up, and then steps right on the top of his hat and head, still trying to get up on the roof. Finally, Trumbull shoves him up onto it and Gillie starts climbing towards the window. However, this

is no easier, as he finds it hard to get any traction and grabs onto an old grapevine in a panic. Trumbull orders him to keep climbing, and he then does almost reach the window, but when he grabs for the sill, he slips and slides back down. Stopping himself, he groans, "Why did I ever escape from prison? It was so peaceful there." Trumbull tells him he's going to keep trying until he succeeds, and with that, Gillie scrambles up and manages to tumble through the window. 

Getting to his feet, and shushing himself, he hears Black talking in a loud, theatrical voice in the next room. Creeping to the door and peeking inside, he sees Black sitting up in bed, reading excitedly from Shakespeare's Macbeth. He quickly closes the door and peeks back in, as Black grows more and more taken with what he's reading. Gillie silently wishes for him to go to sleep, but he, instead, gets out of bed, takes a sword from above his mantel, and walks about the room, coming to spout off verses

from the play; Gillie comments, "Crazy as a bedbug." Black runs for the door with his sword and Gillie ducks out and behind a large screen. Black bursts out of the room, yells, "Have at you, sir!", and cuts a row of candles in half with one swoop. He then turns and starts stabbing into the screen, nearly missing Gillie, whose eyes bulge out at the sight of the blade. He backs away, only for Black to stab into the screen again. Panicking, Gillie scrambles to the corner of the wall and

knocks the screen over. Black is shocked at the sight of him and Gillie, after briefly introducing himself, dives out the window, sliding across the roof and falling on top of Trumbull. Black, appearing to have a heart attack, stumbles back into his bedroom and rings for his servant before collapsing on the bed. While Gillie tries to explain what happened to Trumbull, Black's servant enters the bedroom and finds his master. Trumbull and Gillie argue about whose fault it is, when the servant runs out the door, hastily dressing himself.

Gillie figures he might be going to fetch the police and Trumbull sends him ahead to stop him. He intercepts the servant, only to learn that he's actually going to get a doctor, saying his master is possibly dying. Hearing this, he rushes back to Trumbull and tells him; Trumbull responds, "Ohh... Oh, how sad." In the next scene, the doctor examines Black and declares him dead. The servant, however, isn't so certain, telling him Black suffers from catalepsy and that he's supposedly died before. With this knowledge, the doctor

decides to perform some more tests. Out in the hallway, Gillie climbs back through the window and creeps to the open bedroom door. He overhears the doctor tell the servant, "I'm sorry, but your master is quite dead," and, after tipping his hat, walks back to the window and confirms his death to Trumbull with a throat-slitting motion. Satisfied, Trumbull orders Gillie to come back down, who climbs out of the window, complaining about having to go up and down repeatedly, when he slips and slides down yet again... all while Cleopatra watches from nearby. Trumbull goes to the front door, knocks, and, after waiting and singing to himself, the servant answers. He tells him, "Mr. Black and I have, uh, an appointment," and is allowed inside. 

Later that night, Trumbull and Gillie arrive home with Black's body in their carriage. They remove him and carry him to the shutters leading down into the basement but Gillie, bringing up the rear, drags his end of the body, complaining about it being too heavy, and then says Trumbull walks too fast ahead of him. On their way down the steps, Gillie's end of the body drags and bumps along them. Reaching the bottom, they fling him up onto a slab and slide him across it. Gillie asks, "You're not going to embalm him tonight, are you?", but

Trumbull says, "We haven't embalmed anybody in six years. Why should we start now?" After telling Gillie not to think, saying he doesn't do it so well, Trumbull prepares to head up to bed. Gillie goes to do the same with the horses, but he stops halfway on the steps leading up into the house, lamenting how sorry his life is, when he sees Black's nose twitch. Shocked, he then sees his lips pucker, and he lets out a frightened exhalation, while Cleopatra runs off in fright. Trumbull, having heard him, asks what's wrong and Gillie motions him over and

points at Black. Trumbull doesn't see anything strange, but Gillie tells him, "I don't think he's quite dead enough yet to bury." Trumbull is dismissive of this, but then recoils and yells when he sees Black yawn. Awakening, Black looks about his surroundings and asks, "What place is this?" Sitting up, he recognizes Gillie, who quickly hides his face, then asks Trumbull why he's there. Trumbull answers, "Well, you're here because you're dead, Mr. Black," to which he retorts, "The

hell I am!" Trumbull says, "Oh, yes, you are. Everybody else knows you're dead, Mr. Black, except apparently you," and when Black asks, "What jiggery-pokery is this?", he answers, "Not jiggery-pokery, Mr. Black. Hinchley and Trumbull, funeral parlor." Realizing the implication, and seeing that Trumbull isn't bluffing, Black runs for the stairs but Trumbull grabs his robe and pulls him back down. When Black tries to get around him, Trumbull grabs a mallet and threatens him with it. Seeing this, Black staggers and collapses to the floor. Examining him, Trumbull is satisfied that he is dead this time. He decides to put him in the casket and the two of him grab his body and place it inside. Closing the lid, Trumbull, again, prepares to go to bed, as does Gillie. 

But, Black has other ideas. Moaning, he opens the casket lid and, again, says, "What place is this?" Trumbull tells Gillie to close the lid but Black puts up quite a fight, pushing back against it. Even when Gillie puts his entire body's weight on the casket, Black continues to fight back. Trumbull joins Gillie, pressing his own body on the casket, as he and Black argue: "Let me out of here!" "We most certainly will not let you out of here, sir!" "Confound you, sir!" "Confound you too, sir! Will you kindly have the goodness to die?! "Never!

Help!" Trumbull then sits on the casket lid, as does Gillie, but Black continues pushing against them. Gillie comments, "For a man in his condition, he certainly has a lot of energy!", and Trumbull adds, "The stubborn crackpot! I could have sworn he was dead!... I've never had such an uncooperative customer in my whole life!" The pushing stops and Trumbull and Gillie both breathe a sigh of relief, when they're suddenly thrown backwards onto the floor (there appears to be a frame or two missing, as it suddenly cuts to them hitting the floor rather

than actually showing them being thrown off). Black looks over the edge of the upright lid and comments, "I regard your actions as inamicable to good fellowship." Trumbull and Gillie get up and come at him again, and though Black tries to escape, Trumbull grabs him and shoves him back into the coffin. At one point, he pushes against his face, only to recoil and yell that Black bit him. He has Gillie hand him a mallet and bops Black on the head before he can climb out. Black collapses back

into the coffin, as Trumbull then asks for a gag and some chains. Cut to the funeral, as Trumbull unlocks the chains around the coffin and opens the lid. Gillie peeks in and tells him that everyone is there, while he inspects Black to make sure that he's definitely dead this time. After he does and tells Gillie to get out (Gillie grumbles, "Ungrateful employer,"), Trumbull unties Black's hands, removes the gag from his mouth, and grabs the clothes he's to be buried in.

The funeral commences, with the audience having to endure Amaryllis' horrendous rendition of a song called He Is Not Dead but Sleeping (you can hear someone sobbing, but I think it's because their ears are being assaulted). At the front, Trumbull is playing the organ while Gillie pumps, saying, "I wish she would have picked another song," while Trumbull remarks, "I wish her vocal cords would snap." Although Hinchley is able to sleep through this racket, and Gillie enjoys it, despite the suggestive nature of some of the lyrics (He watches

everything we do), everyone else, including Cleopatra, grimaces at Amaryllis' shrill voice. When she finishes with a high note, Cleopatra turns over onto her side and covers one of her ears with her paw, while some flowers in a pot rise up and wilt, followed by the pot shattering. She even gets loud enough to awaken Hinchley, who goes, "Huh? What?" Finally, Trumbull can take no more and slams the lid down on the organ's keys, not so subtly telling her to shut it. She walks off in a huff, and Hinchley then delivers his pathetic,

stammering eulogy for Black, whose name he can't even recall, much to his servant's annoyance. Trumbull has little reaction to his words aside from yawning, while someone in the audience is taking them to heart. At the end of the service, nobody notices Black's nose twitch. After that, they take him to his family crypt, with Trumbull complaining about having to give up his one and only coffin. Under the cemetery keeper's guide, they carry into the crypt and place it there.

Trumbull laments that he feels like he's saying goodbye to an old friend, one he's only had for thirteen years. He and Gillie have this exchange: "I wonder what idiot ever thought of putting bodies in a crypt instead of in the ground, where they belong." "Yeah, and they fertilize plants too." "What a terrible thing to say. Shut up. Well, at least we have some money coming in." "Yes, we have." "Did I say 'we?'" "No. Never." The two of them then leave and the keeper closes the door to the crypt and locks the chain, telling Black, "Have thee a good sleep." Then, as expected, you hear, "What place is this?", emit from the coffin. 

That night, as it storms outside, the residents of the Trumbull household celebrate the lucrative payday, with Amaryllis and Gillie dancing around in the dining room as Hinchley plays the fiddle, while Trumbull sits in the parlor, pours the money onto his table, and virtually showers with it. He also rips up the message he received from Black the other night and tosses the pieces into the air. This montage of celebratory madness goes on for a while, with Gillie getting poked in the rear by the bow to Hinchley's fiddle at one point, followed by

him and Amaryllis playfully chasing each other around the dining room, all while Cleopatra watches from her perch atop a grandfather clock. After a time, though, Hinchley has fallen asleep on the floor, Cleopatra lying atop him, while Amaryllis and Gillie sit under the table, the former singing drunkenly and sounding no better than when she's sober. As usual, though, Gillie is over the moon for her, holding onto her and, despite her warnings of, "Forbear," he doesn't stop his advances. She pulls away from him and runs off

into the next room, him trying to follow, only to bang his head on the table's underside. She runs to the parlor's doorway, where Trumbull is still counting his money. She asks him if he's coming to bed, but he just sneers, "Get out of here." Regardless, she walks on in behind him and caresses his head, but he shudders from her touch and tells her to get away. Sitting on the edge of the table, she asks, "Am I so repulsive?", to which he answers, "That's the word, yes." She tries one last time to be

affectionate, but he makes her get up, as she's sitting on his money. Crushed, she asks, "Then you... reject me?", and he answers, "As long as there's liquor in the house," before taking a gulp. With that, she leaves the room, saying she won't answer for the consequences, which is more than fine with him, as he takes another drink. She walks back into the dining room, in tears, and when Gillie sees this and learns why she's crying, he walks over to her, stepping over Hinchley, and embraces her. He asks her to run away with him and become his wife, saying he'd let her study opera. Overjoyed, she finally returns his affections, saying, "Everything is going to be so magnifique."

Elsewhere, the cemetery keeper is roaming the grounds near the Black family crypt, when he hears tortured yells coming from it. At first, he ignores them, but when they persist, he figures that Black may not be sleeping as peacefully as he bid him earlier and heads to the crypt. Unlocking the gate and walking in as the cries continue, he fetches a shovel and uses it to force the coffin lid ajar. Inside, Black quotes the famous line of Macbeth, "Is this a handle that I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come. Let me clutch thee", as his

fingers grip the edge of the coffin. The keeper then tries to tell him that he must sleep like "all the others," but Black throws open the lid, knocking him to the floor, and climbs out. He recites, "Therefore, Macbeth shall sleep no more. I have done the deed." He stands over the keeper before walking over him and heading out into the stormy night, continuing to recite lines from the play. Once he's gone, the keeper sits up, lets out a frantic yell, and then passes out. Back at the Trumbull house, Amaryllis happily packs her bag, singing,

unfortunately, about Gillie having stolen her heart. She hits a high note that actually causes a candle-holder on a table to move and the corks on some wine bottles to pop. Hearing her downstairs, Gillie comments, "Just like a nightingale," before finishing a note he's writing for Trumbull about how they've run away together. Upstairs, Hinchley snores away in bed, while Trumbull does the same on the couch in the parlor, clutching a bottle of booze. Outside, Black arrives and removes an axe

from a stump, then heads down into the basement through the shutters. A constant banging from the open shudder blowing in the wind rouses Trumbull, who becomes grouchy at the continued sound, thinking it's an impatient person knocking to come in. Getting up, he walks to the front door, only to find the sound isn't coming from there. He walks into the dining room, yelling at the knocker to have some patience, then walks out the backdoor to see the shutter. He drunkenly walks down into

the basement, yelling if anyone's there, but gets no response as he staggers around in the dark. He looks inside an old cabinet, then glances at a stuffed bear standing next to him and grumbles, "What are you grinning about?" He then jumps when a flash of lightning illuminates a portrait of Hinchley, to which he instinctively removes his bottle of poison, growling, "Oh, you old goat." Stumbling forward, he looks at the door leading up into the house and sees that it's open. He staggers up there and, ending up back in the dining room, murmurs, "Something's been opening doors around here, but what?" He jumps and screams when Cleopatra suddenly rushes by him. With that, he takes back the bottle of booze he had before and goes back into the parlor, not seeing a set of muddy footprints leading up the stairs.

While he falls back asleep on the couch, Amaryllis goes on with her singing, when she hears the door handle behind her jiggle. She thinks it's Gillie, until Black bursts in wielding the axe, causing her to scream. Hearing it, both Gillie and Trumbull run upstairs, taking opposite routes and running into each other when they reach the hallway leading to her bedroom. Rushing to it, they reach the doorway in time to see that Amaryllis has fainted on the floor, while Black brings the axe down right in front of her face. He turns and, seeing them, rushes

at them, bringing the axe down right between them when they fall out into the hall. Both of them get up and rush into another room down the hall, as Black keeps on yelling Shakespeare lines. Closing the door behind them, Gillie says, "I thought he was dead," but Trumbull realizes, "He'll never die." The axe starts breaking through the door between them and they rush out into the center of the room. Gillie accidentally extinguishes a candle but says, "It's a little better in the dark," to which Trumbull

asks, "What is? Decapitation?" Black starts chopping down the door and Trumbull and Gillie rush into the corner next to a wardrobe. However, there's not enough room for two people, and Trumbull shoves Gillie off him, telling him to find his own hiding place. At that moment, Black rushes in and starts tearing the room apart, searching for them. Panicking, Gillie hides his face, but Trumbull takes the opportunity to slip out of the room. Hearing his retreating footsteps, Gillie makes the mistake of thinking it was Black who just left the room and

walks out from the hiding place, saying aloud, "Thank heavens he's gone." But, when he lights another candle, Black comes out of the dark and becomes especially enraged when he recognizes him, slicing a small table in half with one swing of his axe. Gillie runs out of the room and downstairs to the foyer, with Black right behind him. He trips and falls down the stairs, knocking himself unconscious when he hits the bottom. Walking down there himself, Black stands over him and

raises his axe, ready to chop him up. Before he can, he's shot from nearby by Trumbull, but he's not even slowed down by this, as he lurches towards him. Trumbull shoots again and this time, he recoils like he should. He melodramatically staggers over to a table and, as he slumps over it, begins the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy, then collapses to the floor. Trumbull smiles in satisfaction, only for him to get back up, say a little more of it, and fall again. Again, Trumbull is

satisfied, until Black, yet again, gets up and intones, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more..." After all this, Trumbull comments, "That I'll believe when I see it." He gets out, "It is a tale told by an idiot..." then collapses again. Trumbull walks over to him, bends down and listens to his heart, only for him to say, "Full of sound and fury... signifying... nothing." With that, Black finally seems to die. Trumbull, again, listens for a heartbeat, noting, "Well, if it was anyone else, I'd think he was dead, but..."

At that moment, Amaryllis, having revived, gasps at the sight of Gillie lying at the bottom of the stairs and accuses Trumbull of killing him, along with Black. He tries to explain that Black was the assailant but she calls him a monster and threatens to go to the police. At first, he tells her to go to bed, but when she keeps pressing him, he grabs her by the throat and strangles her down to the floor, laughing maniacally. Once it's done, he walks over and sits in a nearby chair, chuckling to himself, "Well, who's next?" He gets his answer when Gillie

revives and sees Amaryllis seemingly lying dead next to him. Trumbull doesn't deny that he killed her and he then has to fight off Gillie as he rushes at him and tries to strangle him. When he gets pushed away, Gillie runs into the parlor and grabs a sword off the wall. Trumbull doesn't take him at all seriously, and when he charges at him, he steps out of the way, causing him to run into and smash through a table. As he struggles beneath the table cloth, Trumbull goes for his gun, but then finds he used up all of his bullets on Black. He then runs

into the parlor and grabs the other sword on the wall, only for the blade to fall completely off. Throwing the handle away, he grabs the fire poker and runs back into the foyer, engaging Gillie in a duel. The two of them fight throughout the first floor, knocking over furniture, falling together at one point, and stepping over Amaryllis' body, with Cleopatra running amidst the mayhem (you can plainly see the stuntmen substituting for Vincent Price and Peter Lorre at points). Gillie smacks

Trumbull on the side of the face with the blunt side of his sword's blade, making him yell, "Ouch, that hurt!" He then bops Gillie on the head with the poker, knocking him unconscious once more. Exhausted, he tosses the poker away, intoning, "Oh, what a night!", and grabs onto a statue next to the stairwell. It's not over yet, though, as Black's servant shows up, bursting through the door and yelling about his master having been seen walking through the streets. Then, he sees Amaryllis, Black, and Gillie all apparently lying dead on the floor and rushes back out, screaming for the police. Trumbull is about to try to stop him but then decides, "Oh, to hell with it. Well, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em," and slumps down to the foot of the stairs.

Both Amaryllis and Gillie revive at the same time and, after having a chuckle when they realize that they each thought the other was dead, they walk out the front door together. That's when Hinchley, having slept through the madness, comes down the stairs, asking if anyone's there. He walks by Trumbull, who's passed out, and looks about the foyer, declaring that everything appears to be in order, despite Black lying on the floor in plain sight. On his way back up the stairs, he nearly trips over Trumbull. Thinking he's drunk again, and

hearing him moan, he decides that what he needs is "a dose of your own medicine." He reaches into his vest pocket, takes out the bottle, and pours it down his throat. Still half asleep, Trumbull just smiles and goes, "Ah." Hinchley says, "That ought to take care of you nicely," and then, looking around and not seeing Amaryllis, decides to finally have some of it himself, only to realize it's empty. Trumbull's eyes snap open and he grabs at the bottle, only for Hinchley to tell him, "You took every last drop of it, and me an old man who needs it more than you

do." Hinchley heads on up to bed, saying that, "as usual," nothing's going on, while below, Trumbull stands up, only to clutch at his chest and die about as melodramatically as Black did, collapsing next to him. Once Hinchley's gone all the way upstairs, Cleopatra walks over to Black and climbs up onto him. Crawling up towards his face, his presence seems to aggravate his sinuses, as he wiggles his nose and sneezes. The screen fades to black, and then, Black is heard saying, "What place is this?"

The main actors are listed through their memorable moments being replayed, with a wreath around them, but when it gets to Rhubarb's credit as Cleopatra, the cat crawls out of the wreath and the rest of the credits play over him walking about the set of the Trumbull basement. It ends with him climbing into the coffin, which threatens to close on him, but he manages to climb out before it does.

Like his score for The Raven, Les Baxter's music here is very eclectic and fits perfectly with the nutty tone of the movie. As I said, when the movie opens on a graveside service, the music lets you know that all is not as it seems, with its distant horns and creeping brass suggesting something sinister, yet also playful. It does get mournful enough when the mourners pay their final respects, but when Trumbull and Gillie proceed to dump the body out of the coffin and cover it up, it becomes fast-paced and zany, sounding like the sort of piano music played along with a silent melodrama or silly, Buster Keaton-style comedy, getting especially fast when they quickly fill in the grave and put the coffin in the back of the carriage. It returns back to the opening music when they drive off, transitioning into a symphony that ranges from silliness to soft, sweet music for Amaryllis' theme, accompanied by nutty sound effects, including a variation of the hollow knocking Baxter composed as the leitmotif for the raven himself. It goes back to that melodramatic piece during the main credits, accompanied by other pieces of music that let you know you're in for quite a crazy and oddball ride. It continues to run this gambit throughout the movie itself, with sneaky, sly music for Trumbull and Gillie's break-ins, big, silly sounds for the many moments of blatant comedy, and overly grandiose music for Black's Shakespeare readings and crazed acting out. Even when he emerges from the crypt as a complete madman, the music continues to be overblown and funny. And during the final sequence with the cat roaming around the basement, you get a more low-key, yet still simultaneously morbid and silly-sounding symphony to close it out.

I may just have been so deprived of actual laughs after The Old Dark House that anything would have sufficed but, nevertheless, I will still say that The Comedy of Terrors is a very entertaining and funny romp, with no real flaws that I can think of. The actors are all great, especially Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Basil Rathbone, the cinematography and art direction are quite nice, the music score is memorable, and it works so well as a morbid black comedy with some hilariously quirky characters and instances of slapstick. There's really not much else I can say other than that, if you enjoyed The Raven and the rest of these high-class AIP movies, there's no reason why this shouldn't also tickle your funny-bone.