What Place Is This?

A COMEDY OF TERRORS-1963-AIP presents an all star comedy horror story that takes place in the late 1800's . An undertaker named Turnbull (Vincent Price) is an alcoholic who's horrible to his wife Margolis (Joyce Jameson)) and partner Mr. Gille (Peter Lorre) and is always trying to poison his deaf senile father in law (Boris Karloff). His business isn't doing so well so he goes out at night and kills an old man then conveniently shows up to take care of the funeral but then the old man's widow beats it out with paying. When his stern landlord Mr. Black (Basil Rathbone) demands payment of the rent Turnbull decides to do away with him and have him as a customer. They invade his house to find him reciting Macbeth out loud and swinging a sword. He seems to die from an attack and Turnbull steps in to get the body but Black isn't dead. He keeps popping up with a cry of “What place is this?”. Later when Turnbull rejects his wife for good she and Gille profess their love for one another. Black escapes his coffin with the help of a caretaker (Joe E. Brown in his last role) and gets an ax. While quoting Shakespeare he searches for Turnbull who winds up shooting Black who takes a long time to die! After it seems like everyone is dead they all wake up. Someone calls the police and Gilles and Margolis run away. Dad winds up giving Turnbull the poison. 

Though it has all the earmarks of a Roger Corman film, including an original screenplay by Richard Matheson, THE COMEDY OF TERRORS was the second to last film directed by Jacques Tourneur (CAT PEOPLE, I WALK WITH A ZOMBIE, CURSE OF THE DEMON). His last WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP (1965) was also for AIP and starred Vincent Price. 

Originally it was planned for Karloff to play the Mr. Black role but age and back problems forced him to switch roles with Rathbone, who's very funny.  It's great to see Price teamed with Lorre once again in another enjoyable  comedy/horror outing. 

Matheson had planned a sequel but COMEDY did not perform up to executive producers Samuel Arkoff and James Nicolson's expectations, so no sequel was produced.   

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