- Director: Jacques Tourneur
- Writer: Richard Matheson
- Stars: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3eXY7AC
Synopsis
There’s a funeral in the cemetery. Waldo and Felix stand by as the mourners pay their respects. The funeral ends, the the two dump the corpse into the grave and clean up the coffin in order to reuse it for the next client. Credits roll.
Waldo argues with his wife Amaryllis, while her deaf, elderly father Amos sleeps at the table. He’s a heavy drinker, and she’s a harpy. Amos built up a thriving undertaker business until Waldo ran it into the ground, and now Waldo is continually trying to poison the old man. Felix is a really poor carpenter and an even worse coffin builder. It’s a good thing they have the one good coffin!
Mr. Black wants his rent for the past year from Waldo, which seems to be non-forthcoming. Amaryllis sings opera in the kitchen, and Felix has a crush on her, while Waldo thinks she’s repulsive. They’re nearly broke, so Waldo and Felix decide to ago out and drum up some new business.
They sneak into a rich old man’s house in the middle of the night. It’s clear that these two are the loudest, clumsiest, most inept housebreakers in the country. They find his hot young wife asleep in the first room, and the old man asleep in the second. Waldo smothers the old man with a pillow. Then they wait outside until morning, when they hear the wife scream.
The funeral proceeds until they figure out the widow isn’t coming. Waldo rushes out to the house to find the wife, and the house is abandoned. She took everything and moved to Europe. She left no money, so Waldo isn’t going to get paid.
They are going to have to go out again tonight and find another “customer.” Mr. Black sends them a final notice to collect his rent, which makes Waldo decide that Black will be their next client.
They sneak along to Black’s house, and they bring their pet cat with them. It takes entirely too long for Felix to climb in the upstairs window. Black is inside, awake, and reading Macbeth aloud. He’s roaming the house carrying a sword, so Felix is a little hesitant to leave the room. Felix escapes, but Black has a heart attack.
The doctor proclaims Black to be dead, but the servant mentions that Black suffers from catalepsy and has appeared dead before. Felix and Waldo load him in the cart and take him away. We see that Black twitches his nose; he’s not dead. He wakes up and argues that he’s not dead. “What jiggery pokery is this?” He asks. They start to fight, but Black falls down, dead again.
They dump his body in the coffin, and Black wakes up again. They battle with the coffin lid. “I’ve never had such an uncooperative customer in my whole life,” Waldo whines. Then they whack him with a mallet, and they gag and chain him inside the coffin.
Finally, it’s time for the funeral. Amaryllis wails “He’s not dead but sleeping; He’s not dead at all…” at the funeral. Old Amos gives a eulogy for “old what’s his name.” Then they get the bad news; the coffin is going to be put into a crypt, so they can’t take it back like usual; they’ll have to get a new coffin after only 13 years using this one! They lock him in the family crypt and as soon as everyone leaves, the old man wakes up in the coffin and asks, “What place is this?”
That night, Felix and Amaryllis dance while Waldo counts his “hard earned” money. Waldo ignores Amaryllis, so she goes to Felix for some comfort. They plan to run off together so she can be an opera star and leave Waldo to his bottle.
Meanwhile, back in the cemetery, the night watchman releases Mr. Black from the crypt. Black goes to the funeral home and picks up an ax on the way. Waldo heads down to the basement when he hears a noise and hunts for the intruder while very drunk. He passes out, not noticing the muddy footprints leading upstairs.
Black storms into Amaryllis’ room, and she screams. Black chases them all around the house, shouting Shakespearean quotes all the way. Felix falls down the stairs. Finally, Waldo shoots Black, but he still dies hard.
Waldo’s on a roll, so he strangles Amaryllis as well. Felix wakes up and finds Amaryllis dead. Now Felix decides to kill Waldo and comes after him with a sword. The two have a ridiculous sword fight. Black’s butler barges in and sees everything. He runs off to call the police.
Then Amaryllis and Felix wake up. They walk out the front door and leave town. Amos stumbles down the stairs and trips over Waldo. He pulls out Waldo’s “medicine” and gets Waldo to drink the bottle of poison. Waldo dies as the old man whines about nothing interesting ever happening there. As a final shot, Mr. Black wakes up one more time.
Commentary
It takes a bunch of horror tropes and does a full-on comedy production. Price and Lorre are as good at silly comedy as they are at horror, and it’s just one joke after another.
I lost track of how many times Basil Rathbone died in this film, and I think the others did as well.
It’s a silly one, but it’s a classic.