Tag: Abbott and Costello

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) ****
Over a period of a couple years, I watched all 36 Abbott and Costello feature-length comedies from their scene-stealing minor roles in One Night in the Tropics (1940) to their last disappointing picture in Dance with Me, Henry (1956).

Bud Abbott (1897-1974) and Lou Costello (1906-59) are not on the same elite level as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy, for starters, but they fit on a tier below neatly alongside the Three Stooges and Wheeler and Woolsey.

I recommend 28 out of their 36 films, and I do like the duo and their films a good bit. That said, I do not recommend binge-watching their films because they are often saddled with cornball musical numbers, cornball romantic subplots, and comedic routines that could quickly become very repetitive and tiresome after repeat exposure to their work. I spread their 36 films out very effectively, rarely ever watching any of them consecutively in a single sitting.

Until I recently watched Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein again, easily their most famous picture, I would have even argued they never made a truly great motion picture.

I’ve seen it several times over the years, and I’ve always liked it a lot ever since that first viewing many years ago on AMC. I always considered it nothing less than a very good film and the ultimate Abbott and Costello motion picture experience.

Anyway, this last time watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a meeting of Universal’s main staples, I thought Who the hell am I kidding, this is a great movie and I’m bumping it up to four stars exactly right where it belongs!

Of course, Abbott and Costello don’t actually meet Frankenstein, it’s Frankenstein’s Monster (Glenn Strange) and he plays a subservient role to Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and Larry Talbot / The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), and it’s also not Abbott and Costello but Chick Young and Wilbur Gray who do the meeting within the movie. I guess Chick and Wilbur Meet Frankenstein’s Monster or Abbott and Costello Meet Glenn Strange or Abbott and Costello Meet Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man just wouldn’t have worked as titles.

If you stop and think too much about the inconsistencies and continuity gaps and logical flaws in any Universal horror movie, especially the ones made during the ’40s, you just might drive yourself stark raving mad and start foaming at the mouth.

I recommend just going with the flow. You’ll likely live a little if not a lot longer.

I’m not even going to regurgitate a plot synopsis for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein because life is short, life is precious, and I honestly believe that one knows more or less what to expect from something titled Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbott and Costello developed a routine in their horror comedies, as early as 1941’s Hold That Ghost and starting again with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and continuing through 1955’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, where something frightens Costello’s character and he will try (often in vain) to get Abbott’s character to believe him.

I am not exactly the biggest fan of this routine, I must admit, and it’s the first exhibit for what I wrote earlier about their comedic routines becoming repetitive and tiresome.

They never got that routine down any better than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, however, and it definitely has something to do with the presence of Lugosi (1882-1956), Chaney (1906-73), and, to a much lesser degree, Strange (1899-1973).

Lugosi, Chaney, and Strange play it straight and they help sell the laughs just by acting no differently than if they were in House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula.

Costello never played more convincingly frightened than he does throughout Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Abbott and Costello were never more consistently funny than they are during Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

The Private Eyes (1980)

THE PRIVATE EYES (1980) *1/2
Eighty years of nostalgia account for the appeal of the comedy mystery THE PRIVATE EYES.

THE PRIVATE EYES spoofs Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who first appeared in the 1887 Arthur Conan Doyle novel “A Study in Scarlet” and made a comeback in the ’70s through such films as THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SMARTER BROTHER, THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION, and MURDER BY DECREE, and it takes on a comedic style made famous by Abbott and Costello in such ’40s films as HOLD THAT GHOST and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

Meanwhile, here we are more than 40 years out from the release of THE PRIVATE EYES, possibly feeling nostalgic for the comedic duo Don Knotts (1924-2006) and Tim Conway (1933-2019), who appeared together in a trifecta of Disney live-action pictures before THE PRIZE FIGHTER and THE PRIVATE EYES, both major successes for Roger Corman’s New World Productions. They last appeared together in a cameo for the bomb turkey CANNONBALL RUN II.

Knotts definitely carries more nostalgic heft than Conway, since I remember him from ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ ‘Three’s Company,’ PLEASANTVILLE (playing a TV repairman, of course), and even a play in Kansas City when I was in college. Knotts’ Bernard ‘Barney’ Fife worked up my Grandma like no other fictional character and she reveled in his regularly scheduled comeuppance. I fondly remember giving her a hard time about it, saying that Knotts’ Fife made the show and that it went downhill after his departure. Strangely enough, I remember most fondly a TV spot pairing Fife’s antics with Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ Wish that I could find that spot and crack up once again.

So, needless to say, I entered THE PRIVATE EYES with a generosity of good spirit and desire to laugh. I left 90 minutes later defeated by a really, really, really dumb, dumb, dumb mystery comedy and I have no real motivation to seek out the other Knotts and Conway cinematic pairings.

Knotts and Conway portray Inspector Winship and Dr. Tart, two bumbling fumbling stumbling American detectives who have somehow found themselves working for ‘The Yard.’ They bumble fumble stumble from their very first scene together all the way to the end and if you find that bumble fumble stumble worth a funny rumble the first time, you just might find it funny a hundred times. However, I did not find it funny the first or the last time or any darn time in-between.

THE PRIVATE EYES more accurately recalls a Scooby Doo episode. Hey, wouldn’t you know that Knotts appeared in cartoon form in the episodes ‘Guess Who’s Knott Coming to Dinner’ and ‘The Spooky Fog of Juneberry’ and Conway took on the Spirit of Fireball McPhan in ‘The Spirit Spooked Sports Show.’ I vaguely remember watching all three from childhood, but I still have no doubt they are each better than THE PRIVATE EYES.

Ironically, THE PRIVATE EYES has way too much plot for a dumb comedy.

HOLD THAT GHOST works much better than THE PRIVATE EYES because it has flights of fancy that deviate from its mystery plot like Costello’s dance scene with Joan Davis. Since they were all under the imperial offices of Universal Pictures, HOLD THAT GHOST makes room for musical numbers by Ted Lewis and His Orchestra and the Andrews Sisters. THE PRIVATE EYES, meanwhile, offers scenes like a gas station destroyed by Winship and Tart in a way that recalls IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, a very, very, very, very unfunny comedy. Let’s face it, Hollywood made less dumb comedies in 1941 than both 1963 and 1980.

Knotts and Conway remain likable throughout THE PRIVATE EYES, despite very rarely ever being funny. That said, Australian singer and actress Trisha Noble virtually steals the show out from underneath Knotts and Conway every time she appears as the alluring heiress Phyllis Morley. She’s very, ahem, ‘Oh LàLà,’ like a model for that magazine favored by 1955 Biff Tannen. I can honestly say that she alone boosts the overall rating for THE PRIVATE EYES by at least half a star.