Director: Charles Barton
Screenplay: Robert Lees and Frederic I. Rinaldo
Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange
Release Date: June 15, 1948
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN finds Bud Abbot and Lou Costello in the roles of Chick and Wilbur, two freight handlers who wind up stuck in the middle of a plot between Count Dracula (Lugosi) and Doctor Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert) to resurrect Frankenstein’s monster. Unbeknownst to Wilbur, Sandra has been posing as his girlfriend so that she can lure him to her island castle and place his brain in the monster using experimental surgery. On the trail of the two titans of terror is Larry Talbot (Chaney Jr.), who has flown all the way from London to thwart the evil Count’s attempt to revive the monster.
Combining horror and comedy can be a tricky thing, and in most cases filmmakers in the past have leaned too much on one or the other, resulting in films that are absolute tonal messes. The best horror comedies are those that base that present truly horrific situations and draw their humor from the reactions of their leads. For instance, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is played totally straight, and is an absolutely terrifying film. The reason the film is remembered as a comedy is due to the very believable reactions of the main characters to an absolutely ludicrous situation. Nervous laughter, I have found, is usually the best kind, as the clashing of two very different emotions usually elicits the kind of roller-coaster sensation that has kept audiences returning to horror films in droves since the dawn of cinema.
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN was one of, if not the, first movies to mash up the two genres, and to this day it is still considered one of the most successful. As a lifelong fan of the Universal Studios stable of monsters I found this film to be an absolute blast. I was expecting to see a slapsticky embarrassment that would tarnish the image of the trifecta of terror, but was surprised by how respectful the filmmakers were towards my favorite classic monsters. Wilbur and Chuck may behave like silly oafs, but the scenes involving the monsters are played just as straight as they were in their original films. The comedy comes from the tension that comes from watching the idiotic duo endlessly come within a hair’s breadth of death at the hands of the monsters, and Wilbur’s reactions, while amped up for comedic effect, are not that far off from how you or I might react if we walked around a corner straight into a Dracula or a Wolfman.
While I certainly never laughed out loud at any moment, the film left a constant silly grin on my face. It was honestly a lot of fun seeing all of these monsters on the screen together. This was only the second and sadly last time Lugosi would portray the role he made famous, and it is nice to see him have a little fun right before he slipped off of the abyss into drug addiction. Lon Chaney Jr. brought his usual amount of stressed-out despair to Talbot, though I found it odd that the screenwriters never bothered to explain exactly WHY he was chasing Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Sure, they’re evil and all, but what the fuck did they have to do with him? And for that matter, what the Sam Hell was Dracula’s master plan, exactly? I understand he wanted to control Frankenstein’s monster, and needed a less violent, more pliable brain in order to do so, but to what end? World domination? Seems a bit far-fetched to me, but then again I am talking about a Dracula-Frankenstein-Wolfman mash-up movie, so maybe I should just leave common sense and logic at the door.
I had a lot of fun with this flick, and I think that if you’re looking for a good movie to introduce young children to classic monster flicks, you couldn’t do much better than this. The humor is never juvenile, yet remains simple enough for even the smallest child to get a kick out of, and it features an impressive roster of hell-beasts to keep them entertained. Hell, they even managed to sneak in a last-minute cameo from the disembodied voice of Vincent Price as the Invisible Man that single-handedly kicked this flick’s rating up one grade in my book. More than anything, I want to have fun when watching horror movies this time of year, and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN provides enough entertainment to keep you laughing to the grave.
My Rating: 8/10
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