Arnold (1973)

Director: Georg Fenady

Starring: Stella Stevens, Roddy McDowall, Elsa Lanchester, Shani Wallis, Farley Granger, Victor Buono, John McGiver, Bernard Fox, Patric Knowles, Jamie Farr

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Arnold is a scream!

Plot: Upon his death, Arnold marries his lover, Karen, in spite of his widow, and leaves deathtraps accompanied by audiotapes and his preserved and articulate corpse for those who cared only for his money.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? Nooooooo!

Think of this as the original SAW movie but with a snappier theme song.

A shorter, less elaborate version of it is in the beginning and as soon as I heard it I knew I was there was going to be trouble. It starts off like a comedy but that dies down as the bodies pile up. The production values suggested this was an elaborate TV movie but it's not.


After Arnold's death, his greedy relatives die, one by one, from traps he set before he died. He even went through the trouble to record his explanations on cassette tapes, too, so he could taunt them throughout the picture. Sound like any movie franchise you know? The only thing that kept me interested was the cast. It was fun seeing a lot of familiar faces in every scene. The humor isn't really funny and there's no real horror threat since it plays too lightly so it doesn't succeed on any level in my book. I'm just glad it's over. Now if I could only get that damn theme song out of my head...that's the real horror.