Normally, I love British dry humor, but I think this may well have been one of the driest comedies I've ever seen. If American humor flourishes in the marshlands of slapstick, and British wit in a dry waste, Kind Hearts and Coronets is somewhere in the Sahara Desert. However, while it's not a funny, the film is still amusing, a dark, deadpan, ironic satire on everything that makes England English.Coronets is certainly a black comedy, featuring as its protagonist Louis Mazzini, a ruthless, psychopathic serial killer. But he's English, which means he also has impeccable manners. Dennis Price plays the role to perfection, floating in and out of social functions while sadly lamenting his fiscal misfortunes. His mother, marrying an Italian singer, was disowned the rest of the D'Ascoyne family, and thus did young Louis Mazzini lose his stake in the family inheritance.
Regrettably but necessarily, old fellow, Louis must take drastic action. What he does do is begin killing off the family, one by one, to repay them for placing such value on social class, all the while climbing towards the duchy himself.
