I
have a big gaping hole in my general knowledge as I haven't seen any
of the Abbott and Costello movies, so it was time to patch that up. I
started with the double feature of Abbott and Costello: MeetFrankenstein/Meet the Mummy as it had the Frankenstein which seemed to be recommended by most as
one of their best and the Mummy from the next decade to give some
diversity.
This movie should rather
be called Abbott and Costello Meet the Universal Monsters as they
don't actually meet Frankenstein, but they do meet his monster with
Dracula, Wolf Man and a surprise guest at the end. Right from the
start I must say I was amazed that Bela Lugosi was playing Dracula
and Lon Chaney the Wolf Man, just like they did in the originals. Too
bad Boris Karloff isn't playing the Frankenstein's monster, but still
two out of three is quite impressive to be honest, though I guess it
wasn't that big of a task to get them in the movie as all of the
franchises were owned by Universal as was the Abbott and Costello
movies. Anyway Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are working at a
postal office and one day they get two crates for delivery to the
Museum of Horror. Turns out those crates contain the not so dead
bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Dracula plans on
resurrecting the monster and plant Wilbur's brain on it for more
control. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, joins the party in hopes of
stopping Dracula and his devious plan, but as it seems every night
there's full moon things don't work out as planned. Abbott seems to
be the brains of the duo while Costello is the goofier one always
getting into trouble, but they both get their equal share of laughs.
I really liked the chemistry between them at times it was like
watching an old married couple going at each other. Another character
that stood out was Dracula as Lugosi gives out quite a great
performance in this one. What made this movie stand out from the
other horror comedies of it's kind was that it didn't directly make
fun of the monsters, they could have just as well been in a horror
movie, it's the duo around them creating the comedy. That works
surprisingly well. The comedy is a mix of crazy goofball action,
slapstick and witty remarks. And especially those witty remarks
really cracked me up. Even though time hasn't been kind to this one,
I must say this was one of the better horror comedies out there and
probably the best of it's time. I was truly entertained and got some
very good laughs.
80%
Abbott and Costello are in
Egypt and get mixed up with a murder of an archaeologist and a plot
to raise the mummy of Klaris. Even though this movie had it's moments
and actually couple of hilariously funny scenes, it's extremely
repetitive from the Frankenstein one. The scene at the
archaeologist's office was almost like an exact copy of the one at
the Museum of Horror from the previous one with the same jokes just a
different surrounding. Sure it still managed to squeeze a few laughs
from me, but I started to worry that these characters don't have that
many jokes in them as there were very familiar scenes later in the
movie as well. However there were some quite original ones in there
as well, so it's not a total miss. The start was not that easy as it
seemed so similar to the previous one, but towards the end this movie
kind of found its place. So in the end it was merely an ok comedy.
Even though I didn't like this one that much I must say I'll
definitely will be watching more of the Abbott and Costello movies in
the future as they truly are a funny pair of characters.
50%
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