Film

The Trouble with Harry

Hitchcock's fondest oddity: a pastel New England murder farce where nobody can agree who killed Harry, or whether it even matters. It's less a mystery than a mood — droll, unhurried, faintly macabre, with Bernard Herrmann's first film score humming underneath. Ideal for anyone who likes their comedy dry as a Vermont autumn and their corpses treated as mild social inconveniences.

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Kind Hearts and Coronets1949

The same era's blackest British wit: a young man methodically murders his way up the family tree while narrating it all with impeccable manners. Dennis Price's calm is Harry's tone taken to its logical, homicidal conclusion.

But It's a genuine study in cold-blooded plotting, sharper and less cosy than Hitchcock's village whimsy.

Kind Hearts and Coronets poster

Arsenic and Old Lace1944

Two sweet old aunts have been quietly poisoning gentlemen callers, and everyone around them is far too polite to make a fuss. Cary Grant flails through the chaos; the corpses just keep turning up.

But It's broader and stagier than Hitchcock's dry underplaying — more farce, less deadpan.

Arsenic and Old Lace poster

Waking Ned1998

A dead man, a lottery ticket, and an entire Irish village conspiring to keep the corpse's good fortune alive. Same warm, complicit small-community comedy — everyone lying a little, charmingly.

But Gentler and more sentimental; the stakes never really feel like anyone's in trouble.

Waking Ned poster

The wildcard

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Monsieur Verdoux1947no page yet

Made eight years earlier by silent cinema's biggest star reinventing himself as a black comedian, it's the same dare Hitchcock took — treat murder as a matter of manners, not horror — attempted first, and by an even less likely candidate.

Chaplin, of all people, playing a suave serial killer who marries and murders wealthy widows with total composure — funny, chilling, and delivered with the same unbothered charm Hitchcock later gave his villagers.

But Considerably darker and more overtly political; Chaplin's charm here curdles rather than comforts.

More like this (8)

Death at a Funeral2007

A body refuses to stay put, secrets spill out, and an ordinary occasion spirals into slapstick disaster. It's Harry's corpse-keeps-moving engine cranked up to farce speed.

But Much more frantic and crude — Hitchcock never once resorted to a drug mix-up gag.

Death at a Funeral poster

The Ladykillers1955

Ealing's own genteel crime comedy, from the same year: a sweet old landlady, a gang of crooks posing as musicians, and murder handled with terribly good manners.

But More caper than character study — the pleasures are plot-driven rather than atmospheric.

The Ladykillers poster

Fargo1996

Trade Vermont's autumn palette for Minnesota snow: ordinary, decent-seeming people quietly dealing with a body and its consequences, all delivered in unnervingly polite small talk.

But Considerably bloodier and more menacing — the comedy sits right next to real violence.

Fargo poster

Blithe Spirit1945

Noël Coward's ghost farce, made the decade before, treats death as an amusing inconvenience among the upper-middle classes — the same brittle Englishness, just with a séance instead of a shovel.

But Stagier and talkier, closer to drawing-room theatre than Hitchcock's rural visual comedy.

Blithe Spirit poster

A Simple Plan1998

What happens when ordinary, mild people find a body and start making bad decisions about it — this plays the same premise almost entirely straight, and it's devastating.

But There's no comfort here — it trades Harry's charm for genuine dread and moral collapse.

A Simple Plan poster

Very Bad Things1998

A corpse, a cover-up, and a group of friends slowly unravelling — the pitch-black comedy of complicity taken to a nastier, more panicked extreme.

But Vicious and cynical where Hitchcock stayed fond of his characters; not for the faint-hearted.

Very Bad Things poster

The Death of Stalin2017

Same engine — a corpse nobody quite knows how to handle, and a group of people lying to each other about it — recast as political satire with teeth, proving the joke survives regime change.

A dead body sets off a scramble among terrified, self-interested officials, each one improvising cover stories while pretending everything is fine — Harry's plot, run through Soviet politics at gunpoint.

But Savagely funny but genuinely brutal underneath; the stakes are real terror, not village embarrassment.

The Death of Stalin poster

Corpse Bride2005

Same idea rendered in an entirely different medium: animation lets a literal corpse become a sympathetic, even romantic figure, showing how far the film's central joke — death as gentle inconvenience — can stretch.

A stop-motion Tim Burton fable where death is treated with more warmth and humour than the living world, in a quaint, slightly gothic village not unlike Hitchcock's Vermont.

But It's a family-friendly musical fantasy — sweeter, sadder, and aimed at a much younger audience.

Corpse Bride poster

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