Sixty years after it first hit screens, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN still ranks for me as the best comic-horror film ever. It overflows with hilarious and scary bits, clever one-liners, and a few nifty, if low-tech, special effects. Bud and Lou are freight handlers who meet not only Frank's Monster (Glenn Strange), but also Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.). Two of my favorite bits are when the Monster spots Costello for the first time, and Lou’s face scares him – and when the Wolf Man (played so straight by Chaney that he seems to be in his own WOLF MAN film) warns Costello that at midnight he turns into a wolf, to which the chubby little fellow replies, "Yeah - you and 20 million other guys!" There's also a great line that somehow managed to get past the censors – I don’t know how. Chick (Abbott) says to Wilber’s (Costello) girlfriend, “How can a beautiful gal like you be interested in Wilber, I don’t get it,” to which she replies as she walks away, “And you never will.” Get it? (Trivia note: Strange played the Monster in two other Frankenstein films in the post-Boris Karloff years, but you might remember him best as Sam the bartender on TV's "Gunsmoke.")
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)
Comedy meets horror
Sixty years after it first hit screens, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN still ranks for me as the best comic-horror film ever. It overflows with hilarious and scary bits, clever one-liners, and a few nifty, if low-tech, special effects. Bud and Lou are freight handlers who meet not only Frank's Monster (Glenn Strange), but also Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr.). Two of my favorite bits are when the Monster spots Costello for the first time, and Lou’s face scares him – and when the Wolf Man (played so straight by Chaney that he seems to be in his own WOLF MAN film) warns Costello that at midnight he turns into a wolf, to which the chubby little fellow replies, "Yeah - you and 20 million other guys!" There's also a great line that somehow managed to get past the censors – I don’t know how. Chick (Abbott) says to Wilber’s (Costello) girlfriend, “How can a beautiful gal like you be interested in Wilber, I don’t get it,” to which she replies as she walks away, “And you never will.” Get it? (Trivia note: Strange played the Monster in two other Frankenstein films in the post-Boris Karloff years, but you might remember him best as Sam the bartender on TV's "Gunsmoke.")
