As frequently noted in IMDB reviews, the cast of this "comedy horror" is far better than their material. Vincent Price plays Waldo Trumbull, an alcoholic ne'er-do-well who has married into a failing undertaking business. With his partner, the perennially wingeing Felix Gillie (Peter Lorre), he does what he can to drum up business by hastening people's final exits. Karloff (who, like Lorre, was very ill at the time of production) has limited screen time as Price's addled father-in-law while buxom Joyce Jameson plays Price's torturously off-key opera-singing wife, on whom Lorre has cast a lusting eye. On the other side of the shovel is Shakespeare obsessed and apparently unkillable Basil Rathbone. 'Cleopatra' the cat is played by Hollywood's superstar feline 'Orangey" (aka "Marmalade"). Although not one of director Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, the film does contain several of the morbid author's favorite tropes (e.g. catalepsy, premature burials, cats). Much less entertaining or imaginative than Corman's previous Poe outing ('The Raven' 1963), 'The Comedy of Terrors' is a straight-out comedy, with slapstick moments including sped-up sequences (perhaps to mask the aging and slow-moving stars), silly sound effects (tires squealing as the carriage careens to a stop), and (deliberately) hammy over-acting (especially by Rathbone). There is some good material (Price's snide comments are the best parts of the script) but all-in-all, the film is only moderately amusing (in a nostalgic way) and is more interesting as part of the long cinematic farewell to horror icons Lorre and Karloff. Cat lovers can rest assured that Cleopatra does not go the way of many of Poe's feline characters.
Review of The Comedy of Terrors
