The irascible and very wealthy Great Aunt Louisa (played by Renee De Vaux) is a confirmed invalid. She is ensconced at a hotel where she discharges one maid after another for incompetence. Her family, at the head of whom is Father (Charles Laughton) and Mother (Marie Wright) have expectations of what they would do with Aunt Louisa's money. "Let's send Elsa," they suggest, in the hope that their household drudge will completely mix up Aunt Louisa's medicines and hasten her end. So the new maid (Elsa Lanchester) duly arrives at the hotel. However, despite Elsa indeed making a complete mess of her medicine duties, Aunt Louisa survives, only to collapse in a faint at the sight of a huge caterpillar on her lettuce.
A doctor brings her round and Elsa enquires "Will she live?" ... "Of course," the doctor replies, "she just needs a sudden shock to cure her hypochondria". So Elsa plans the new shock treatment. She leaves the old lady fast asleep in her bath-chair in the middle of the road as motor maniacs speed past, but she sleeps soundly on. Then she wheels the bath-chair onto a railway track with the old lady still sleeping blissfully. The train's impact whisks Aunt Louisa clean out of her chair and, before Elsa knows it, the old lady is cavorting down a country lane, skirts held high, at great speed.
Back to the family, still relying on Elsa to polish the old lady off and waiting in high expectations of a great fortune from Aunt Louisa's will. Instead, they receive a telegram from the old lady: "Am cured and feeling thirty years younger. Have adopted Elsa!" A tableau of the aghast family brings the story to an end.
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