Arsenic and Old Lace

Joseph Kesselring’s classic comedy Arsenic and Old Lace follows Mortimer Brewster, a relatively normal drama critic whose newly engaged bliss is shattered when he discovers his sweet, spinster aunts have a chilling hobby of "mercifully" poisoning lonely old men with arsenic-laced elderberry wine. As Mortimer frantically tries to cover up their crimes and keep them out of prison, the family's Brooklyn home descends into total chaos with the arrival of his two eccentric brothers: Teddy, who firmly believes he is Theodore Roosevelt and digs graves in the cellar under the delusion he is excavating the Panama Canal, and Jonathan, a psychopathic serial killer on the run who shows up with his alcoholic accomplice and a fresh corpse of his own to hide. What ensues is a hilarious, fast-paced farce as Mortimer desperately attempts to manage the mounting body count, outwit his sinister brother, keep his fiancée in the dark, and somehow preserve his own sanity.