Jacques Tourneur, believe it or not, directed The Comedy of Terrors (1963), and Richard Matheson, confoundedly wrote the script. It's rare you see attempts at burying a man alive, suffocating another with a pillow, sneaking into houses, high pitched squealing replacing proper send off funeral singing for the "dearly departed", dumping bodies in dug cemetery plots and keeping the coffin as penny-penching strategy, and narcolepsy poked fun at so gleefully. Price and Rathbone especially appear to be having a grand old time, just tongue wagging in cheek. Lorre just always had the face for comedy, and the blacker and wicked, the better. But Rathbone refusing to die, with Price and Lorre trying to conceal him in the coffin with little success, is the film's main macabre bit of nonsense. If directed differently this could quite horrifying in the vein of darkest Poe.
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