Serial Killing as Comedy

I LOVE Joseph Kesserling's ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.  Granted, I am more familiar with Frank Capra's movie version of the play, but I absolutely LOVE this story.  I don't know why I find it funny that two very sweet, little elderly women are killing lonely, elderly men as a CHARITY--with elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strictnine, and another poison I can't remember right at this moment in time--cyanide!  But this is THE FUNNIEST movie EVER!!!!  I love it!  Aunt Abby is my absolute favorite character.  If I ever get a chance to act in a play, I want to play Aunt Abby.  And I'll "run" across the floor on my tiptoes everywhere I go!!!! 

I always hesitate to take this movie into my classrooms because it's in black and white.  It came out in the movie theater in the early 1940s, so to students, it's REALLY "OLD."  Students tend to be wary of old movies, especially old black and white movies.  But I have found that, for the most part, many of my students don't mind it so much once they get into it.  Some of them are even laughing more throughout the movie than I am--which is VERY unusual!!! 

I know serial killing is not a funny subject, but any stretch of the imagination.  It is NOT something to joke about, but when it comes to a story like this one that is so obviously ridiculous to the extreme and it's MEANT TO BE RIDICULOUS, it's impossible not to laugh....!!!

Every semester I think about NOT showing ARSENIC AND OLD LACE in my Lit. as Research classes, but in the past couple of years, every semester, I can't bring myself to take it out of my curriculum....and so far, I'm glad I'm using it!!!!