IIRC from the play (I don’t recall if this appears in the film) the aunts had taken some neighborhood boy to the movies to see a horror film…starring Boris Karloff. (They complain to each other that they’re not going to let him select the film again.)
You, uh, do know who Boris Karloff is, right? 
Stranger
Karloff played Jonathan, not Mortimer.
PS: I played Lt. Rooney in a high school production of the show. And I should’ve been Dr. Einstein. I was able to do a very good Peter Lorre for the audition.
I knew that. Honest. 
VCNJ~
A classic but obscure Alfred Hitchcock film that also partially pays homage to a Heinlein masterpiece isn’t good enough for you?
I can’t agree with the top 10 but it might make my top 10 comedies.
Jim
I was really proud of the props I made for one production: I made photographs and portraits to hang on the walls of the set for various Brewster relatives referred to. (They were mounted on foamboard in a paper gold frame, but from the audience they looked real.) All of them were in-jokes: for the Brewster ancestor who was arrested for scalping Indians, for example, it was a portrait of a 17th century murderer (I forget who exactly) and for the portrait of the two sisters as young ladies it was the Borden sisters (Lizzie & Emma), a wedding pic of Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, etc., but the ones I was proudest of were the pics of the aunts’ parents. For their father I took a photograph of Boris Karloff as a doctor, sepia toned aged it to look ca. 1900, and for their mother I sepia toned another photo of Mother Muffin, a Boris Karloff drag character. The great thing about the Karloff photos: both were used courtesy of Boris’s daughter Sara Karloff, who said (via e-mail) she thought her father would more than approve of their use and that he always regarded his Mother Muffin character as “Looking like a two dollar whore after a three day drunk”.
In the first national tour of Arsenic the role of Jonathan was played by Bela Lugosi and the dialogue changed accordingly to mention Dracula rather than Frankenstein movies. In the last Bway revival the role was played by Jonathan Frid (pic as Jonathan) and later Abe Vigoda (no pic available, but you know what he looks like) while Einstein was played by, among others, Henry Gibson and William Hickey (the most inimitable voice of any weird little old man in show biz history). The role of the aunts in the Vigoda production were played by Jean Stapleton and Marion “Happy Days” Ross, while Mortimer was played by Gary “Travis” Sandy of WKRP fame- sounds like a great production!
Actually, as reported in the bio of Boris Karloff, they producers convinced him to be in the play [he was originally reluctant] by reading him the line " I killed him because he said I looked like Boris Karloff"
Did you know Boris also played the father/captain hook/nana the dog in a broadway production of Peter Pan?
Homage to a Heinlein masterpiece? I have to admit to being confused. I take my moniker, however, not directly from the Hitchcock film but rather the Patricia Highsmith novel on which it is nominally based. (My first attempt was The Cry Of The Owl but some loathsome slug with extraordinarily good taste beat me to the punch.)
Sampiro, the props sound great. I suspect, however, that few appreciate your genius.
Stranger
In the interest of science, and purely to fight ignorance, I will sacrifice my time this evening to watch the movie. I shall report back in, say, two hours and let you know how they explain it in the movie.
Sorry the Heinlein part is my own fault. When I first saw your user name I was thinking Valentine Michael Smith on a train. I then remembered the Hitchcock movie.
What I want to know is why Veuve_ClicquotNJ knew Marley23 played Lt. Rooney in a high school production of the show? 
Jim
I played Joanathan in a little theater group. For makeup I chose an understated clown white accessorized with a couple of red scars. I gave the director’s kid a nightmare, which means it was the high spot of my theatrical career.
And Jinx, it’s not so much that the sisters were ignored in the second half. It’s just that with Jonathan, Mortimer, Einstein and the interruptions by Elaine, the doctor and the cop, something had to give.
Perhaps my reputation preceeds me. And what a shame that would be for everybody. The last thing I want people to know is my reputation.
Well, you should have used the title of Highsmith’s second novel.
I’m pretty sure no one’s taken The Blunderer.
(insert smiley face)
I didn’t get the impression the authorities even knew about the murders committed by the aunts. None of the cops, concentrating as they were on Jonathan, actually went down to the cellar and when Elaine comes bursting in at the end (having sneaked into the house through the cellar) screaming about 13 bodies buried there, Mortimer shuts her up by smooching her and hustles her the heck outta while the cops roll their eyes and think “oh, man another loony toon. This neighborhood’s full of 'em!”
Earlier on when the aunts announced insistently that there were 13 bodies in the cellar, Mortimer deflected it by shouting about the hundred bodies in the attic, nearly getting himself committed in the process.
It’s a hilarious movie, though Cary Grant’s mugging goes just a little too far for me.
