Monday, October 22, 2012

Bud and Lou crash the party.


The last one covered Universal to death, but, here's the last little spinoff bit off of it.
The "Abbot and Costello meet...", series.


Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)


The film/history-

Pretty well beaten this one to death..

See here, here, and here.

Considered by many to be the best of the lot.

Oh yeah, and lucky I reminded myself (see Invisible Man sequels), the Vincent Price Invisible Man makes a voice cameo at the end.
Sort of becomes a retroactive prelude to "...meet The Invisible Man".


Abbott and Costello Meet The Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)


The film-

A send-up of generic murder mysteries.

Karloff is sort of a glorified cameo shoehorned in to give the thing more star-power.
And, he's not the killer.
Oh, he's capable of killing, and tries to do so ( for example, a bit where Karloff as a hypnotist swami tries to get Lou to commit suicide) but, he's not the actual killer of the whodunnit.

Course, this is not the first time, A & C had a messed up title.

The history-

Ditto "meet Frankenstein", from "Dracula-thon Part 2".


Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man (1951)


The film-

Lauded for actually having better effects than the original Invisible Man films.
Almost as good as "...meet Frankenstein".
In the top three of the best of these.

The history-

Ditto "Karloff".

Oh yeah, duh, I made a comparison to "...meet Frankenstein", and "Ghostbusters", but it also occurs to me, "Shaun of the Dead", and "Hot Fuzz", are the latest re-incarnation of this sort of horror-comedy.
...although, it ain't clean anymore.
Still...


Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (1953)


The film-

Most seem to agree "...Hyde", is second best to "...Frankenstein".

Notable gags, the suffragettes fistfight bit, and Lou getting turned into a giant mouse.

Also, as mentioned before (See Jekyll/Hyde films) this is the one that loopholes Jekyll/Hyde into the Universal canon.

Karloff is back as Jekyll.
Once he changes, however, a stuntman plays Hyde.
Well, no way an old fart is gonna be hopping around on rooftops....

The history-

Double-ditto "Karloff".


Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy (1955)

The film-

"..Mummy", is one of the lesser ones of the waning days of their career, but not the worst, and a good goodbye to this particular series.

Notable bits, the "take your pick", routine as a rehash of "who's on first?", Lou eats the magic medallion in his hamburger, and gets cartoon X-rayed, and Lou gets bandaged, so there's a mixup with three mummys.

Nitpick, the Mummy suit is crap, more like pajamas with a bandages pattern on it, but, screw it, it's a comedy

The history-

Triple-ditto "Karloff".


And, that's those.
And that's Universal all done.

A two-fer for ya today.
Tonight, I close the gap between classic, and modern, with Boomer-age neo-classic monsters.

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