The Comedy of Terrors (1963) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Trumbull is facing eviction from his funeral parlor due to unpaid rent. Desperate for money, he murders wealthy residents to generate funeral business and collect their wealth. He justifies this by reusing the same coffin to cut costs and believes killing wealthy locals will quickly fill his coffers and save his business.

Foreshadowing: Earlier, Trumbull complains about the lack of customers and the mounting rent owed to landlord John F. Black, establishing his financial desperation.

• Waldo Trumbull
• murder for profit
• eviction
• funeral business
• greed

After being pronounced dead by a physician, Black is placed in his family crypt. However, Amaryllis's cat Cleopatra jumps onto his chest and wakes him. Black suffers another heart attack from the shock, but Trumbull knocks him unconscious again and proceeds with the funeral as if Black never revived.

Foreshadowing: A servant warned that Black has suffered periods of death-like sleep before, foreshadowing his unusual ability to revive.

• John F. Black
• crypt revival
• Cleopatra
• cat
• heart attack
• death-like sleep

Amaryllis has endured Trumbull's abuse, his schemes to poison her father, and his general neglect of the business in favor of alcohol. After watching Trumbull celebrate his latest murder and make another crude advance, she finally decides she's had enough and escapes with Gillie, who she realizes genuinely loves her.

Foreshadowing: Gillie has been making clumsy passes at Amaryllis throughout the film while she remained loyal, but Trumbull's escalating cruelty pushes her toward Gillie.

• Amaryllis
• Gillie
• leaves Waldo
• abuse
• escape
• loyalty

After Black is killed and Amaryllis awakens, she believes Gillie is dead and threatens to call the police on Trumbull for the murders. In a desperate attempt to protect his scheme and himself from exposure, Trumbull attacks and strangles her to keep her silent.

Foreshadowing: Trumbull has shown increasing violence throughout the film, including his plan to poison Amaryllis's father and his general brutality.

• Waldo Trumbull
• Amaryllis
• strangle
• murder
• police threat
• desperation

Hinchley slept through the entire night of chaos. Later, he finds Trumbull dead or dying and attempts to revive him with a vial of 'medicine' that he mislabels. Trumbull realizes too late that the vial actually contains the poison Hinchley had intended for Amaryllis's inheritance scheme. Trumbull drinks it and dies, completing the darkly ironic justice of the film.

Foreshadowing: Earlier, Trumbull disguised poison as medicine to kill Hinchley for his inheritance, setting up the deadly irony of poison being misused at the end.

• Hinchley
• poison
• vial
• medicine
• accident
• death
• irony

When Gillie attempts to murder Black in his bedroom, he finds Black awake and wildly swinging a sword while reciting Shakespearean lines. This theatrical, feverish behavior suggests Black may have been experiencing some kind of delirium or was simply eccentric. The episode causes Black to die of a heart attack from the excitement, even though Gillie fled without harming him.

Foreshadowing: Black's theatrical death scene later in the film continues the Shakespearean theme, establishing his dramatic personality.

• John F. Black
• sword
• Shakespeare
• fever
• heart attack
• theatrical

Cleopatra the cat is Amaryllis's pet who inadvertently revives Black in the crypt by jumping on his chest. This triggers the chain of events where Black awakens, escapes, and initiates the chaotic climax. At the film's end, Cleopatra approaches Black's body and causes him to have an allergic reaction, serving as a macabre comic coda.

Foreshadowing: Cleopatra appears in early scenes with Amaryllis, establishing her presence before the pivotal crypt scene.

• Cleopatra
• cat
• Amaryllis
• crypt
• revival
• allergic reaction
• ironic ending

Trumbull wants to hasten an inheritance that would come through Amaryllis as Hinchley's daughter. By poisoning the senile Hinchley and disguising the poison as beneficial medicine, Trumbull hopes to kill Hinchley quickly and collect the inheritance to save his failing funeral business.

Foreshadowing: Trumbull's general greed and willingness to kill for money is established early when he decides to murder wealthy residents.

• poison
• Hinchley
• inheritance
• murder
• scheme
• medicine

Gillie falls unconscious down a flight of stairs during the chaos. After being presumed dead by Amaryllis, he awakens and attacks Trumbull with a sword. Trumbull strikes him down with a poker, but Gillie survives the assault. At the film's conclusion, Gillie and Amaryllis, both battered but alive, escape together, leaving the doomed Trumbull behind.

Foreshadowing: Gillie has been an unreliable but persistent suitor for Amaryllis throughout the film, making his eventual escape with her a form of minor redemption.

• Gillie
• survives
• escapes
• Amaryllis
• fight
• sword
• poker

The film uses classic horror-comedy techniques: exaggerated characters played by legendary actors like Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre; absurd situations like Black's repeated revivals and theatrical Shakespearean death; darkly ironic consequences; and farcical pacing where plans constantly go wrong. The murders are never shown graphically, and the emphasis is on the chaotic mishaps rather than genuine danger.

Foreshadowing: The opening scenes establish the absurd premise and over-the-top characterizations that signal the film as comedy rather than horror.

• comedy
• tone
• horror
• satire
• absurd
• dark humor
• farcical