Arsenic and Old Lace

Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by Joseph Kesselring, which was made into a film by director Frank Capra. Capra actually filmed the movie in 1941 but it was not released until 1944.

On his wedding day, theatre-hating drama critic and confirmed bachelor Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) must cope with his bizarre family, especially his two elderly aunts who live in the old family home in Brooklyn.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Mortimer's aunts are "kindly" serving lonely old bachelors elderberry wine poisoned with arsenic and then burying the bodies in the basement. His younger brother Teddy thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, and his other brother Jonathan, a wanted murderer, arrives with a plastic surgeon, Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) in tow. (In the original stage production, Jonathan was played by Boris Karloff, and the script made joking references to his resemblance to the actor.) Eventually, Mortimer is overjoyed to discover that he is not biologically related to these insane people, and is actually the son of a sea cook.