Fact1: film tells Set in late 19th century in New England town of New Gilead of unscrupulous undertaker Waldo Trumbull and reluctant assistant, Fact2: Trumbull 's old business partner started business and Trumbull 's neglected wife and Hinchley 's daughter, Fact3: Trumbull keeps whom trying under guise of giving him medicine, Fact4: Trumbull and Gillie make nighttime visit to home of Phipps, Fact5: Black chases Trumbull and Gillie around house with ax before being shot
Output: Set in the late 19th century in the New England town of New Gilead, the film tells of unscrupulous undertaker Waldo Trumbull Price and his reluctant assistant, Felix Gillie Lorre, who make a habit of reusing the firms one and only coffin by unceremoniously dumping the bodies of the people they are supposed to bury. Also a part of the household are Trumbulls old and senile business partner Mr. Hinchley Karloff, who originally started the business and whom Trumbull keeps trying to poison under the guise of giving him medicine, a plot continually foiled, and the beautiful Amaryllis Joyce Jameson, Trumbulls neglected wife and Hinchleys daughter, who has dreams or rather delusions of becoming a great opera singer and with whom Gillie is passionately in love. However, Trumbull is not the businessman his fatherinlaw used to be due to his personality and his constant tippling, and when customers and therefore money begin to become scarce and moneygrubbing landlord Mr. Black Rathbone begins demanding his unpaid rent, Trumbull and the unwilling Gillie make a nighttime visit to the home of Mr. Phipps, an elderly gentleman with a very young and attractive wife. Trumbull smothers Phipps and in the morning makes a fortuitous return so that the Hinchley and Trumbull funeral parlor will get the job of burying Mr. Phipps. However, on the day of the funeral, Trumbull discovers to his horror that Mrs. Phipps has decamped with all of the money and household furnishings... and, incidentally, without paying Trumbulls fee. That evening, after receiving another demand for immediate payment of rent, Trumbull decides to murder Mr. Black, who has bouts of deathlike sleep, a condition that Trumbull and Gillie are unaware of. After discovering Gillie who has climbed into the house through an upstairs window and escapes the same way, Black seemingly has a fatal heart attack and is pronounced dead by his physician, but revives in the funeral parlors cellar. After a prolonged chase and continual struggles to keep Black inside a coffin, Trumbull knocks Black out with a mallet to the head and later inters the supposedly deceased Black in his family crypt, returning home to celebrate his newfound wealth. However, Black awakes again, escapes from the coffin and crypt and returns to the funeral parlor, quoting random lines from Shakespeares Macbeth from which he was reciting from a script at the time of his first cataleptic attack. Humorous events follow as Black chases Trumbull and Gillie around the house with an ax before finally being shot and presumably killed by Trumbull after a lengthy monologue. More complications arise when Amaryllis believes Gillie to be dead hes only unconscious, having fallen down a flight of stairs in an effort to escape Mr. Black and, believing Trumbull to have killed both him and Black, threatens to go to the police, whereupon Trumbull strangles her. Gillie comes to and seeing Amaryllis body goes after Trumbull in revenge. The two men engage in a comical fight Gillie with a sword and Trumbull with a poker until Trumbull hits Gillie on the head with the poker, knocking him out. Mr. Blacks servant arrives with the news that Black was seen walking through the streets and, seeing the carnage, runs away screaming for the police. Trumbull, having had enough, collapses in a depressed heap on the floor by the stairs. Gillie and Amaryllis come to at the same time and elope together. Hinchley, who had slept through everything, appears and gives Trumbull some medicine actually the same poison that Trumbull had been attempting to administer to Hinchley earlier. The medicine works as intended, and Trumbull, after realizing what he has drunk, dramatically drops dead as Hinchley makes his way up the stairs and back to bed, oblivious to the fact he has just committed murder. At the end of the film, Black exhibits an allergic reaction to Cleopatra the cat, indicating that he is still alive.