Arnold (1973)

Fantastic!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I really like this movie for a number of reasons.First it delivers the shocks and the laughs almost at the same time.It does not pretend to be high art.This movie is fun in a lot of ways. If you have not seen it, you know right at the start that the greedy bunch of relatives and hangers on are going to be dispatched one by one. Part of the fun is guessing who is going to be next on the list. Stella Stevens has seldom looked better than she does in this movie. She has a terrific body and that alone is worth the price of admission. But there's so much more. The cast is comprised of mostly character actors who have had some connection with the bizarre and macabre cinema before. Among the cast members are Victor Buono, Elsa Lanchester, Roddy McDowell, Jamie Farr, Farley Granger, John McGiver and Bernard Fox. Needless to say everybody in the cast gets what they so richly deserve. But the final supreme joke involving Bernard Fox and John McGiver is the topper!

This movie is one of the better "Ewwww...I would hate to be them" type movies. It was way before its time. Roddy McDowall is so cocky and nasty in the movie that you know his time is going to come, and when it does-- it's a real headache!After seeing this movie at such a young age, I was afraid to dress in any sort of Halloween mask-- fearing that I would end up like poor Robert (Roddy McDowall). Way cool!The ways everyone bites the dust is very inventive. An excellent cast with an excellent plot. Kind of like TEN LITTLE INDIANS meets SAW. I wish I could find it on DVD!

Ah, the brilliance of BCP films.....what can one say? At least this one is fun (just imagine a "Love American Style" episode if made by Hammer Films). Once again a mixture of has-been and never-were big and small-screen actors get bumped off in ways that will seem silly to veteran viewers of Brit-horror films such as TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS and VAULT OF HORROR. It even has the obligatory crappy Shani Wallis song (poor talented-but-totally-misused Shani).

"Arnold" is a fun but minor example of the genre of "Mass Murderer impossibly out-psyches all of his victims" films. For better examples, see either of Vincent Price's "Dr. Phibes" movies, or VP's "Theatre of Blood," probably the best crazed killer on the loose but with a theme movie ever made.But... "Arnold" is sheer fun in the sense of watching a corpse kill off all his heirs solely because he knows them so well. Sure, the methods of killing are ridiculous -- acidic cold cream, a killer suit, a squishing shower, a well placed guillotine -- but the supporting cast is marvellous, the suspense is there, and the "bad guy" wins. Bonus points: Elsa Lancaster, and the dead guy looks a hell of a lot like Jack Cassidy, although he's not.I'd recommend this film as the second rental on a double feature; something to provide gory nasty thrills, but not quite as gross as whatever first choice nastiness you rented that evening.