Summary:
Two freight handlers encounter Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man.
My Thoughts:
I have fond memories of watching a few Abbott and Costello films when I was a child, though it’s been so long now I can’t remember which ones I’ve seen and which ones I haven’t. I think Lou Costello (“Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man”) has some incredible comedic chops, and some of the choices he makes in this film in particular are absolutely genius. Bud Abbott (“Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy”) plays a pretty solid straight man. And together the two make a balanced comedy duo; some of their jokes are based on wordplay while others are more slapstick/ physical humor. I find that they divide their time between slapstick and clever wordplay pretty evenly, so honestly I think most audiences could get a kick out of this, no matter what age. As far as content goes, any ten year old would be fine with it. The jokes are harmless; the pacing of the film is pretty quick; and the actors all seem like they’re really enjoying what they’re doing. Watching this film got me excited to check out more of Abbott and Costello’s work.
“I’ve had this brain for thirty years, and it hasn’t done me any good!”
After freight handlers Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) receive a mysterious shipment bound for Mr. McDougal’s (Frank Ferguson, “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”) House of Horrors, they find themselves face to face with Dracula (Bela Lugosi, “Dracula”) and Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange, House of Dracula”), and soon after The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr. “The Wolf Man”) joins as well, but to assist the freight handlers. Can Chick, Wilbur, and the Wolf Man stop Dracula’s evil plan?
So really Lou Costello was what impressed me the most during this film, I found some of his choices to be delightfully hilarious, and some of those choices seemed a bit improvised, which made it all the better. There were great parts where he broke the fourth wall and looked directly at the camera as if to say, “did you just see that?” and I always found his expressions to be hilarious. I honestly thought he stole far more scenes than his partner, who was actually a little less likeable than I remembered. I thought the best part about Abbot was his reaction to Costello’s relationships with his girlfriend, Joan (Jane Randolph, “Cat People”) and then later Dr. Sandra (Lenore Aubert, “Abbot and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff”). The running joke that Costello gets all the ladies is played pretty low-key, but it works better every time they bring it up.
As for the rest of the actors, I feel like Bela Lugosi always dances on the edge of hokey, and in this film he was pretty close to falling over the ledge. He moves with dramatic hand movements and waves, his cape always thrust mysteriously before his face. I have no problem with his theatricality, in fact I think it adds to the charm; it’s just a byproduct of the time period. I always end up watching Lugosi’s performances with a permanent half-smirk. This is (as far as I know) the first film I’ve seen Glenn Strange in, and he was fine as the monster; most of the time he’s unconscious. I was surprised to see Jane Randolph, as a few years back I watched “Cat People” and loved it- she’s just as good in this as she was in that. Lon Chaney Jr. is so great. I loved him in “The Wolfman”, and I loved him in “Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told”. He gives so much to his performances even when they are just silly monster movies. He has less to do in this film than some of the other characters (after the first scene we don’t see him again for about forty minutes), but he still has some fun moments. It was really cool to see all of the Universal Monsters together in one movie (even the Invisible Man gets a cameo at the end of this film). In a way it makes me sad that the Dark Universe series was started off so abysmally with “The Mummy (2017)” with Tom Cruise. This movie is like the Universal Monsters pinnacle crossover event (equivalent to the MCU’s “Avengers: Endgame”).
Many of the sets in this movie were absolutely amazing. Dracula’s castle looked great, and there were a few set pieces like hidden passages that interacted with our heroes in somewhat cliché, but still funny ways. Some of the woods outside the castle were obviously sets, but it was also obvious how much work went into those sets, and that makes the movie even more engaging in my opinion. I suppose for some people the fact that you can tell this entire movie was shot on a soundstage might take them out of it, but for me, it’s an absolute delight.
I was also pretty impressed with a lot of the special effects in this movie. As this was produced in the late 40s, I honestly wasn’t expecting too much, but this movie really pushed the boundary as far as tech goes. There were a few sequences where Dracula turned into a bat and back again, and they did this by animating the transformation. While it doesn’t look as great as, say, Dracula’s transformation in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, for a 1940’s film it looks pretty darn great. It reminded me somewhat of the ghost effects in “The Uninvited” (1944).
Verdict:
I recently was talking to a buddy the other day who said that he’d always had an interest in the Universal Monster series, but he didn’t know where to start because he thought that movies made in the 1930s and 40s were boring. Well, I’ll be the first to admit that not all of the Universal films are particularly thrilling, and some of them are actually quite boring (“The Mummy (1932)”), but this one is not one of the slow ones. This is a perfect place to start with the Universal series. It’s fast paced fun entertainment the whole family can enjoy.
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