I'm sitting here watching The Comedy of Terrors (1963), and Price and Lorre, undertaker and casket maker respectively (well, neither is very good at their job!), are off to bump off a Mr. Phipps. Basil Rathbone's property loan agent is threatening to kick them out on the street if the arrears of missed payments aren't forked over. The problem they have is that they can't seem to quit making noise... amazing thing is that despite the loud rustling about, they don't seem to awaken Phipps! The irony that the very man wanting the rent will be selected as the next body to be buried when Phipps' sexy young wife skips out on paying them for funeral services of her elderly husband says it all in this black, zany bit of comic wickedness.
Karloff's a senile old kook who once ran the funeral business during its more successful days, and he's always saying off the wall things like how Egyptians embalm their dead and wondering why the daughter he always passes the sugar to takes away his medicine (Price is always trying to poison Karloff's milk!). The sugar gag derives from Karloff lost in his dementia thinking his shrewish, voluptuous daughter (married to Price) is asking for it!
"We shall kill two birds with one pillow."
---Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price)
"There must be a more honorable way to conduct a funeral business."
---Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre)
Karloff's a senile old kook who once ran the funeral business during its more successful days, and he's always saying off the wall things like how Egyptians embalm their dead and wondering why the daughter he always passes the sugar to takes away his medicine (Price is always trying to poison Karloff's milk!). The sugar gag derives from Karloff lost in his dementia thinking his shrewish, voluptuous daughter (married to Price) is asking for it!
"We shall kill two birds with one pillow."
---Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price)
"There must be a more honorable way to conduct a funeral business."
---Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre)
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