Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
                                                                                      
Director: Charles Barton
Year: 1948
Rating: 6.0
After telling a friend about all the Universal horrors I had seen lately, he recommended that I see this one. It combines a few Universal franchises - Abbott and Costello of course who Universal signed up in 1940 after their years in vaudeville and radio; Dracula played by the original, Bela Lugosi; the Wolfman played by the original, Lon Chaney Jr.; and Frankenstein's Monster who is played by Glenn Strange who played the character in both House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. Boris Karloff was no longer interested.



I think this may be my first Abbott and Costello film at least as an adult. I thought Costello was Abbott and Abbott was Costello - sort of whose on first. This was intermittently amusing though Costello - the short fat one - gets kind of tiresome with his running in circles and shouting after a while and Abbott the straight man seems to do very little. While one gets the sense that almost everyone realized they were in a comedy, Chaney plays his role totally seriously. Basically Dracula wants Costello's feeble brain to put into the Monster and that brings on the running and screaming.




The film was such a big hit that two more Universal monsters were employed later in their films - The Invisible Man who we hear at the end of this film voiced by another great horror star, Vincent Price, but who does not appear in the 1951 Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man. This one has nothing to do with the Claude Rains films. And in 1955 they Meet the Mummy. A couple other horror themes played out in Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Boris Karloff and in 1949 they Meet The Killer, Boris Karloff. There was clearly money to be made in comedy horror back then.