A few hours with Abbott & Costello can help anyone escape our crazy times. So, if you’re feeling down, take two or three of these films and repeat as necessary.
I sometimes like to divide people into two mutually exclusive groups based on their personal preferences. Kind of like my own personality test. For instance, Star Wars or Star Trek; Munsters or Addams Family; football or baseball; Bull Durham or Field of Dreams; Brady Bunch or Partridge Family. Obviously, one can like both. However, I hold to the silly belief that if you have the right pairings in enough areas you could figure out a persons personality based on their entertainment selections. For instance, Abbott & Costello or Three Stooges? If you lean towards A&C, like me, you’ll like this entry.
I first encountered Abbott & Costello when I was eleven or twelve. This would have been 1980 or 1981. Our cable package picked up Channel 5 out of NYC and one Friday night we had a nasty snowstorm. Trapped inside for the evening I popped on the television and found an Abbott & Costello marathon. A lot of the good ones too. Suffice to say, I was up late that night.
So, here are a few suggestions if you feel like some A&C for Halloween.
Hold That Ghost (1941): (this entry is a revised reprint from an early article on Old Dark House movies)
A NYC mobster inserts an idiosyncratic clause in his will: his heirs will be anyone who is present when he dies. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are two hapless gas station attendants that, through their typical misadventures, are present when the mobster dies in a shootout with police. The mobster was also known to have stashed a large amount of cash somewhere, that remains unaccounted for. Bud and Lou inherit an old, upstate, tavern from the mobster. They take a bus to see the place, accompanied by the mobster’s associate (unbeknownst to them) and some strangers that are on other business.
It becomes a dark and stormy night as per usual. They stop at the inn, people get off to stretch their legs, and the bus driver abandons them. The group hunkers down for the night and mysterious happening occur. People disappear, candles move on their own and there may be a ghost. Scooby Doo probably recycled this bare-bones plot fifty times and, well, I’m a sucker for it every time.
This is another Universal offering from 1941. The film was very successful at release and is considered one of the duo’s best outings. It stars a bunch of Universal contract players like Richard Carlson (Creature from the Black Lagoon), Joan Davis and Evelyn Ankers (The Wolfman). The Andrew Sisters have a cameo and Shemp Howard also appears as a soda jerk.
Hold That Ghost can usually be seen on TCM around this time of year so check your local listings.
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948):
This is considered the duo’s best picture and, as contrarian as I can be, I have to agree.
Bud and Lou are baggage handlers at a train station in Florida. They receive a phone call from London begging them to beware of a shipment heading for a local wax museum. The crates supposedly contain the remains of Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Lou cannot understand the call because the caller begins to turn into a werewolf.
The owner of the wax museum arrives and arranges for Bud and Lou to transport the crates to the wax museum. Dracula hypnotizes Lou, resurrects the monster and when the museum owner arrives with an insurance agent (to assess the damage to the shipment) the bodies are gone.
Dracula, with the help of few scientists, wants to replace the monsters primitive and aggressive brain with a more docile brain, which would be Lou’s brain. The typical Bud and Lou antics ensue.
First, despite being an absolute spoof, the look of the film is perfect. It feels like Universal horror. Indeed, the monsters are played by the actors that portrayed them in the earlier horror films. Lugosi returns as Dracula, Lon Chaney as the Wolfman and Glenn Strange as Frankenstein’s monster. Not Karloff but he did play the monster. There is even a cameo of sorts by Vincent Price.
When this was produced, Abbott & Costello where in a slump. They were no longer the Universal cash cow they had been during the war. New management at Universal was attempting to move the studio away from cheap horror films and towards more high-end, prestige films. This was going to be their last foray with the monsters. However, it was Universal’s biggest hit of the year and the boys would go on to do a series of Abbott & Costello Meet...The Mummy, The Killer, The Invisible Man...
Some Universal fans hate this film and blame it for the demise of the Universal monster films. Once something is so well known as to be parodied, its generally finished, at least for a while. In fact, I would argue the opposite. The old monsters were not making bank after the WWII. There were new horrors to film, like the big bug movies that reflected the anxiety of the new nuclear age. Caped Counts and lumbering monsters were finished. Yet, this is a good gateway movie for younger kids. My daughter and I watched this when she was ten and she loved it enough to want a poster for her room. It also led her to watch the real Universal horror films and she loves those as well.
This one is a gem and clocks in at less than 90 minutes.
Who Done It? (1942):
The boys dream of being radio mystery show writers but, because they’re Abbott & Costello, they work the counter of a diner near a big radio station. They meet a new writer and one of the producers of Murder at Midnight, the nation’s most popular radio show, and get tickets to the show. A studio executive is electrocuted during the broadcast and Bud & Lou pretend to be detectives. Their brief interrogation of some of the suspects is quite clever. When actual detectives show up to investigate, they suspect Bud & Lou of being the killers.
The duo is chased through the studio where they get to interact with all sorts of radio props. Hilarity ensues. Oh, there’s also a Nazi spy.
The film also stars William Gargan, William Bendix, Louise Allbritton and Mary Wickes.
This is a good one. While not perfect for Halloween viewing (it is a mystery film, not horror) it is much better than some of their other meet the monster movies. Meet the Mummy, for instance, is lesser Abbott and Costello. Here, I like the radio station setting. It’s a great setting, especially for those of us who missed out on that entertainment era.
Other films that might be good Halloween viewing are A&C Meet the Killer (Boris Karloff), A&C Meet the Invisible Man and A&C Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Its been awhile but I recall liking the Karloff picture but being thinking the Invisible Man picture was mediocre.
Abbott & Costello began their film career in 1940. Between 1940 and 1945 they appeared in sixteen films! Many of those films were their best and just about all were hits and major moneymakers for the studios. Today, it feels like this great comedy duo is forgotten. Three Stooges reruns can be found all over cable channels and are supposedly a favorite of certain frat-boy types. I rarely see Abbott & Costello’s movies or television work. They should not be lost to time. In fact, with today’s technology, I would like to see a A&C film that has the two working within the Trump White House. That has possibilities.
The poll is below. Not all of their many films are included.