The blurring of comedy and horror is not always an easy process, but it is one that has yielded some of the most brilliant and provocative works in the history of cinema. It takes quite a special writer and director to combine two wildly different emotions – laughter and fear – and create an atmosphere where they exist in tandem, as well as bringing out the best in one another. Jacques Tourneur was certainly very capable, and while most of his more notable productions were more straightforward, serious works that set the foundation for the horror genre, such as the revolutionary Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie, he did have many flirtations with humour on occasion. One of his more interesting projects was The Comedy of Terrors, in which he collaborates with the iconic American International Pictures, known for grinding out small-scale horror and science fiction films on a startling scale (and we responsible for some of the more fascinating films directed by Roger Corman), to tell the story of a pernickety undertaker who decides that he is going to take revenge on his stubborn landlord by killing him, only to discover that his victim is seemingly invincible, leading to several misadventures. It is a simple premise but one that is very traditional for the time in which this film was made, and while it is far from being the most nuanced or complex work made by Tourneur, who elevated himself from a journeyman director into someone who could helm just about anything and put his distinctive mark on it, but it was an opportunity for this master to try his hand at something more offbeat, and the results are absolutely spellbinding, with every moment of this film being unforgettable in its own small but very significant way, which is all that can be expected from such a wickedly entertaining film.

The key to a good film is a strong story – but not every project is entirely equipped with this, so it helps to have a resourceful director at the helm who can guide everything in such a way that it gives an illusion of complexity, at least to a certain degree. Tourneur was a good visual stylist, but he was also a master of reworking weaker scripts, or those that lacked substance, forming them into much more nuanced affairs, which is why having him at the helm of The Comedy of Terrors, as opposed to one of the newer rambunctious young filmmakers circling around the company at the time, was a good decision. As a director, he brought an old-fashioned sensibility that fitted in well with the New Hollywood movement, but also a very progressive sense of direction that proved to be a lot more layered than a lot of his contemporaries. This is likely why Tourneur stayed working quite late in his career and amassed quite a solid body of work. The Comedy of Terrors would very rarely be called one of his signature films – it was his penultimate directorial outing, and one that essentially had already been crafted through the combination of the script, which told a very simple story, and the cast. His responsibility was to shepherd everything together in a way that felt convincing and compelling, and he certainly achieved that without any difficulty. The direction of this film is remarkably fluid – the way he uses the camera (which he always viewed as a tool to shape a story, more than just a static device used to capture images) is quite inventive, and while we may not notice them, the film is filled to the brim with bespoke flourishes that he tenderly places in various parts to enrich the story and add something that could be spotted by more eagle-eyed viewers, who will undoubtedly find value in a lot of these details.

In all honesty, a film like The Comedy of Terrors was essentially already victorious the moment the cast signed on to appear. It is highly unlikely that any film starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff or Peter Lorre is not going to be wholeheartedly worth our time, so to have them appearing together immediately makes this worth our time. This era of making films that could be produced extremely cheaply but still attract the highest calibre of actors, since the combination of the supposed decline of their genre and the fact that the studio system still lingered meant that the likes of Price, Lorre and Karloff were actively seeking work – and I’d argue that there are rarely any actors that come nearly as close to being icons of the horror genre quite as much as them, Price and Karloff in particular. For most of us, just witnessing these actors sharing the same space is enough – so the fact that they are all delivering such stellar performances is only an additional surprise. This is wholeheartedly a film that belongs to Price – he’s the most dynamic of the central trio, and he plays this kind of eccentric villain so well, mainly because he can be effortlessly charming while still being extremely despicable, and we can never get enough of his antics when he is at his peak. Lorre, in one of his final roles, is a very warm presence, and Karloff, in a smaller role than usual, does steal every scene he is in, even though playing a far more subtle character, while Basil Rathbone makes a worthy adversary for our protagonists. Joyce Jameson manages to hold her own across from these legendary actors and brings a lot of gravitas to a relatively thankless role. The cast of The Comedy of Terrors is uniformly very strong, and with the strong personalities on display, seeing them acting across from each other is quite a spectacle, but one that is certainly worth the time and effort to assemble these legendary performers.

However, as much as we can celebrate these iconic actors for the strength of their performances, The Comedy of Terrors is also distinctive for being one of the smarter horror comedies produced at the time. Whereas many of these films contained stories that matched their cheap financial backing and therefore resorted to a lot of unnecessarily bawdy humour, this film proves to be a much more elegant affair. It does have the same components, including a major character being played by a blonde model – but even in this instance, the character played by Jameson is far more nuanced than a typical sexualized object of affection. It also seems as if Tourneur was intent on taking the bare-boned structure of this kind of film, including all the more unappealing or troubling elements, and then inverting them to become something much more complex, without impacting our overall experience. It becomes quite effective, especially in those portions where the film needs to convince us to suspend disbelief – and it works since there is never a moment where it resounds as inauthentic, despite the implausible nature of the story. It also helps that there are many layers of humour embedded in the film – it is a social satire that draws a lot of laughter from how it presents the social differences between the protagonists and their victims, but it also employs a lot of slapstick (so much that Karloff had to switch roles with Rathbone, as the former was unable to handle the physical toll needed to play the role of the villain), so the humour is diverse and flows just as well as the story, giving the film a sense of unpredictability. Numerous layers went into the creation of the film, so it stands to reason its success is the result of a lot of hard work to bring this story to life, which proves to be quite a solid foundation on which to build the narrative, giving the viewer something valuable along the way.

Perhaps a cursory glance will mislead the unsuspecting viewer to believe this not to be a film of any particular value outside of being an over-the-top, silly horror comedy that assembles a strong cast and tells a hilarious story – but to be fair, this exact description is precisely why The Comedy of Terrors is a terrific film and one that is widely appreciated by a solid portion of the audience that have repurposed it into a cult classic of note. It has only recently started to be redefined as a genuinely great film, which takes time considering the entire defence around the film is that it represents how genuinely compelling a strange, off-kilter film like this can be, especially since some feel that it lacks substance when in reality there is something much more authentic about a film that aims to entertain long before anything else. It’s a bold and compelling comedy that manages to be genuinely frightening in some parts (or at the very least eerie, with a lot of both the horror and comedy coming from the atmosphere that is evoked in the process), but mainly strives to be entertaining, which it achieves without any difficulty. The great cast, solid story and generally fun tone all make for an engaging film, and one that reminds us of a bygone era in filmmaking, where such deeply deranged but wildly enjoyable films could be made without any fear of losing viewers, instead of knowing that there would always be an audience for something so offbeat and unconventional in one way or another.