Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein: A Review

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN

I have tried. I really have tried. However, try as I might, I simply do not find Abbott & Costello funny. In my few dealings with them, all Bud does is either yell at or beat up on Lou. To be fair, the childlike dimwit Lou would probably drive anyone into fits of rage. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, the comedy team's first foray into the world of the Universal Monsters, is fine, but I still cannot understand the appeal that they have. 

Cantankerous baggage clerk Chick Young (Abbott) and his frenemy and coworker Wilbur Gray (Costello) have been tasked to deliver a couple of packages to a Florida horror museum after Wilbur gets a strange phone call from London. Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) begs Wilbur not to take the crates to McDougal's House of Horror, insisting that they contain the real-life Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Despite Wilbur's misgivings, he and Chick take them to the museum, where the terrified Wilbur sees Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange) rise. Chick, however, keeps missing the creepers and thinks Wilbur is crazy.

Not, however, as crazy as Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert), who is smitten with Wilbur. Chick finds it impossible to believe that a beautiful woman like Sandra would find the short, fat and intellectually weak Wilbur an object of desire. Chick is right: Sandra, who is Dr. Mornay, is not interested in Wilbur's body. She is interested in his brain, but to use as part of Dracula's plan to resurrect Frankenstein's monster and make him Dracula's slave as part of his plot for world conquest. Wilbur is the perfect brain: totally blank and easy to control. 

More hijinks occur when insurance agent Joan Raymond (Jane Randolph) also appears to find Wilbur irresistible. That is part of her plan to find out what happened to the missing delivery objects, the idea that they literally walked away impossible for her to believe. Things get more complicated when Talbot comes to Florida, but struggles whenever there is a full moon, for that causes Talbot to turn into The Wolf Man. Will Chick and Wilbur, aided by Talbot, be able to stop the evil plans of Dracula and Dr. Mornay? What role if any does her assistant, Dr. Stevens (Charles Bradstreet) have in this unholy plan? Things come to a head at a masquerade ball and the next day, when some meet a fiery end, and a surprise monster makes an unseen appearance.

I wish I could love Abbott & Costello the way so many people do. Having now seen two of their films, this and when they met The Invisible Man (or met him again), I still do not get the appeal of a bully and a nitwit. I find both personas of Abbott and Costello pretty grating: the former is almost always abusive towards the latter, and the latter is almost always someone with the mind of a four-year-old. Yet, I recognize that for many, Abbott & Costello are comedic geniuses. Now, after decades of avoiding Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, I think the film is fine. I did not find it hilarious. I did not find it clever. I found it tolerable.  

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein seems a bit of a misnomer given that a lot of their interaction is with either Dracula or the Wolf Man. I could even be more technical in that Abbott and Costello did not actually meet Frankenstein himself, but his Monster as the Monster is not named Frankenstein. Moreover, I think Frankenstein's monster is in the film less than Dr. Stevens, and he seemed pretty unimportant to the plot apart from making him both Dracula's dupe and a potential love interest for Joan. 

As a side note, I copyright the term "Dracula's Dupe". 

I think the humor in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein comes from the blending of the spooky and the silly. I suppose that one can have the IQ of Wilbur Gray and see that the film mixes traditional horror tropes (the scary music from Frank Skinner's score, the lobotomy plot, the various underground passages) with the idiocy of Lou Costello. The film has some of the cast playing things mostly straight, which in turn allows Bud and Lou to be as outrageous as they can be. 

Yes, that juxtaposition is where the humor comes from. It did not hit me often, but fair is fair to say that it did sometimes land. When Chick flat-out asks Sandra, "What I'd like to know is what's he got that I haven't got?", she replies, "A brain". The double meaning of her response is funny, as is the logic. Sandra is telling Chick the truth, but the pun in Robert Lees, Fredrick I. Rinaldo and John Grant's screenplay has a surprising wit to it. Another scene has Sandra, now under Dracula's total control, attempting to bring Wilbur to the dark side.

"I'll bite," he tells her. "No, I will," she replies. The pun in "bite" with one meaning one thing, the other meaning something else yet both being accurate is amusing. I also must confess that I did find the sight of Lou Costello as Wilbur Gray, this dimwitted but sweet figure, shyly tucking his head on Bela Lugosi rather cute and endearing.

Costello also had a way with the dialogue where the zingers come fast and furious. Complaining about a previous date that Chick had set Wilbur up with, the latter remarks, "Mine had so much bridgework, every time I kissed her, I had to pay toll". Using contemporary slang, both Chick and Wilbur dismiss Talbot's worries about his werewolf transformation given neither believe it. On being informed by Talbot that in a full moon, he turns into a wolf, Costello remarks that so do millions of other guys. 

Costello, despite his stature and girth, has surprising dexterity. A nice bit is when, mistaking the Wolf Man for Chick in a mask, he finally stands up for himself and starts smacking the monster. The mix of Wilbur's courage, even anger, against a menace he is unaware of would bring laughs. 

When Abbott as Chick finally got wise to the goings-on, he too was amusing. He does not catch on until late in the film, as he is the unbelieving figure. However, once he sees that Wilbur and Joan are in danger, he rallies to save them. 

Abbott and Costello's zaniness is countered by everyone else playing it straight. Nowhere does Bela Lugosi behave as though this is a comedy. Curiously, this is the only other time he plays Dracula apart from the original film. However, he is perfectly serious and even menacing, such as when he hypnotizes Sandra. In what I found a daring scene, we can read ecstasy from Aubert's face when she is bitten.  As a side note, I wondered if Hedy Lamarr would have been better in the role, a mix of beauty and brains amidst all the chases.

I was surprised by Chaney, Jr.'s performance. He, to my mind, had not quite decided whether to play it straight or try for a little send-up. It was not a bad performance, but I wasn't completely sold by it. Strange as the Frankenstein monster looked more like Herman Munster than Boris Karloff's version. It was like the film itself: fine. 

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (technically Frankenstein's Monster) ends in an amusing gag. I am still not won over by their antics, but I did think well enough of this jaunt through horror with laughs that I did not end up feeling that I had wasted my time. "This is awful silly stuff", Wilbur observes to himself as he reads the Dracula legend. I think that sums up Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, amusing if not flat-out hilarious, at least to me. 

DECISION: C+