"Arsenic and Old Lace" is a farcical black comedy revolving around Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic, who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family while avoiding the local police in Brooklyn. Since insanity runs rampant in his family, Mortimer must decide whether to go through with his promise to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine, a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt, and an even worse brother who has just received plastic surgery to look like Boris Karloff.