Karen (Stella Stevens) is beside herself with joy. It’s her wedding day and she’s finally going from being the mistress of Lord Arnold Dwellyn to being his wife. There’s just one tiny problem: Arnold is frickin’ dead. Zany! How the cost-cutting trend of pairing both your funeral and wedding on the same day never caught on is beyond me. Arnold’s widow (Shani Wallis), his family, and servants are also perplexed to be attending this happy/mournful event. Thanks to Arnold’s bizarre will and testament, Karen must live with his corpse for the rest of her natural life. Oh, and bonus, there’s money hidden somewhere in the castle for his relatives to find, but the whole place in tricked out in deadly traps. What an Arnhole!
Before Arnold of “Diff’rent Strokes” and Arnold of “Hey Arnold!”, there was Arnold (1973), a film from director George Fenady before he ducked back into almost entirely television series work. This horror comedy feels very much like a slightly naughty TV movie with some incredible locations and lovely studio interiors passing (or rather not passing) for the outdoors. Just in case you were thinking of taking this film seriously, the brassy theme song as sung by Shani Wallis is like a slap in the face. Spoiler alert: “Arnold” was not a hit song, at least not on this planet.
Veteran actress Stella Stevens is a delight as the seemingly innocent (and possible necrophile) newlywed Karen. Stevens’s comic timing is excellent and she’s just lovely. I don’t like seeing Jamie Farr (of “M*A*S*H” fame) in brown-face makeup playing a presumably Indian character, but at least he keeps it subtle. Heck, he is practically a prop and not much of a character at all. Roddy McDowall steals the movie as he nearly always does, which is quite a feat when you have amazing character actors like Farley Granger, John McGiver, and Victor Buono to compete with. And adding some true Hollywood royalty to the cast is Elsa freakin’ Lanchaster.
In the early to mid-1970s, Bing Crosby Productions released some fun stuff like Willard (1971) and You’ll Like My Mother (1972). Director Fenady and most of the crew on Arnold also did Terror in the Wax Museum (1973), which (based on the trailer) looks just as wacky as this film, but without the comedic overtones. John Fenton Murray, one of the co-writers of Arnold, also worked on Pufnstuff (1970) and “Lidsville” but must have not been imbibing in any of the good shit while hammering away at the typewriter this time around.
I might have let some unrealistic expectations for Arnold get in the way of my enjoyment. Based on the cast alone, I was expecting something a little better. It’s a fun but predictable timewaster, and there’s just something missing. Maybe if the story had relied more on its gallows humor than the traps, I might have enjoyed Arnold more. I bet Jigsaw loves this one! Fans of early 70s horror fluff that seems more at home on the small screen than the drive-in will find enjoyment here. That seems awfully specific, but I know you’re out there.
Arnold looks marvelous on this Vinegar Syndrome release, scanned from 35mm in 4K and presented with DTS-HD MA mono audio. I don’t know how this film could look any better than it does here. As far as extras go, Mike White of The Projection Booth Podcast provides an excellent audio commentary on the film and writer/critic Samm Deighan has an awesome video essay about the trope of folks spending the night in an old house to meet the bizarre conditions of a dead relative’s will. Great stuff!