Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)

Director: Charles T. Barton
Universal, 1:24, b/w
Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup)
Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Boris Karloff, Lenore Aubert, Gar Moore, Donna Martell, Alan Mowbray
TC4P Rating: 6/9

Perhaps Abbott and Costello meet "a Killer," not "The Killer," would be more appropriate. Screen legend Boris Karloff's "phony" swami, as the police declare him, may have no qualms about hypnotizing Costello's bellhop character into offing himself, but he is only one of many suspects residing in a hotel swarming with police looking for the murderer of an attorney. Karloff is great fun in the swami role, but he also disappears largely from the film after some pretty good early scenes. Costello booby-traps his room to try and catch the real killer, but naturally, because Costello set them up, his traps backfire in numerous places. Of course, many murders occur in the meantime, and also of course, Lou will get the blame for all of them, but that's the fun part, right? 

Watching the pudgy little guy bluster and whistle and sweat his way from bad situation to worse situation, all the while simultaneously aided and blocked, sometimes in the same sentence, by his best pal, Bud. That's what Abbott and Costello are all about, and this one delivers the goods, albeit in a reduced fashion. However, the inclusion of Karloff adds a large dose of fun to the proceedings, and his influence often elevates even the hoariest of material. He certainly does here.

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Director: Charles Lamont

Universal, 1:22, b/w

Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup)

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Nancy Guild, Arthur Franz, Adele Jergens, Sheldon Leonard, William Frawley

TC4P Rating: 6/9

My disappointment in this film stems from one fact: that Vincent Price appears, or rather, that his voice appears, at the end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The voice is coolly menacing, as the Invisible Man surprises the pair by lighting up a smoke in the end of their boat, just as they believe they have escaped the clutches of Count Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster. "I was hoping to get in on the fun!" he proclaims, and then after some confusion by the pair, he introduces himself. The film ends, but so began my youthful hope that there was another film in the series where they continued the battle with such a foe, and with Mr. Price playing that very part. I swiftly found out in the library (no home computers in those days!) that there was a film where they indeed “meet the Invisible Man,” but it is a far cry from what I believed it would be at the end of their first monstrous meeting.

Not that this film is bad; it just isn't what I wanted when I first saw it. Subsequent viewings left me liking it more and more, and my initial upset over Arthur Franz not being Vincent Price went away (though I still wish that it had happened the way it did in my fantasy world). Franz' boxer Tommy is blamed for a murder, set up by some mobsters who run the fight game in town, and private dicks Bud and Lou set out to help Franz find the evidence to implicate the mobsters. Of course, Franz hiding out at the very laboratory where Dr. Griffin (Claude Rains in James Whale's original Invisible Man film in 1933) created his formula for invisibility all those years ago is both the most unlikely of story plotlines and coincidentally helpful to Bud and Lou's cause. Even if it drives them crazy trying to keep Tommy out of trouble once he is under the insanity-causing influence of the invisibility formula.

The best gags fall around, as do many people and props alike, everyone's efforts to deal with having an Invisible Man in their midst, and the boxing scenes where Tommy helps the inept pugilist Lou are wonderful. Likewise, a memorable bar scene which is capped with an ill-timed visit by William "Fred Mertz" Frawley. But, the problem with the invisibility scenes is that one has to realize that Tommy is buck-ass naked through all of them. You see, the clothes stay visible when the formula is injected, so the receiver then has to strip down to gain the benefit of being invisible. So, basically, you have Bud and Lou hanging out with an invisible guy with his dick flopping all about the place. (I almost said "joint".) You can innocently watch the film and never think about this (hell, I didn't for years), but I defy you to try and do it now that I have pointed it out to you. Who knows, it might even enhance your viewing...

It's just a good thing it's not one of Bud and Lou's wrestling flicks. That might make things a bit more awkward...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Director: Charles T. Barton

Universal, 1:23, b/w 

Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup), Walter Lantz (animation), Eddie Parker (stunts) 

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Lon Chaney Jr. (Lawrence Talbot/The Wolf Man), Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), Lenore Aubert (Dr. Sandra Mornay), Jane Randolph (Joan Raymond), Glenn Strange (The Monster), Frank Ferguson (Mr. McDougal), Vincent Price (the voice of the Invisible Man), Charles Bradstreet (Prof. Stevens) 

TC4P Rating: 7

Abbott: I know there's no such person as Dracula! You know there's no such person as Dracula!

Costello: But does Dracula know it?

As it was with me, this is the film that the youthful monster enthusiast should perhaps first see before progressing on to the older, darker fantasies that preceded it in the Universal canon. Not that I had any choice in the matter; it was by sheer providence that this was my cinematic introduction to Universal's versions of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man (and to a far lesser degree, the Invisible Man). I certainly knew of the creatures; it's hard for someone in our culture not to know those names, whether interested in the genre of horror or not. But this film provided a major catalyst for me, and it was not long before I was scouring the Eagle River Public Library and the library at my elementary school for more information on these and similar creatures and films.

Two elements of this film with whom I was already fairly well acquainted at the time were Abbott and Costello, having first seen them in a television double feature of Hold That Ghost and Abbott and Costello Go to Mars one Christmas morning the winter before I saw this film. But my first introduction to the pair was on an Old Time Radio cassette which held on one side the complete radio show in which they performed their famous "Who's on First?" routine (a Danny Kaye broadcast was on the other side), and to say that I played the hell out of that tape would be backed up by the fact that I eventually wore the thing out to the point where I purchased another copy of the same cassette tape a couple of years later. My baseball fanaticism of those years had also unwittingly bought me a ticket into the slapstick-and-wordplay world of Abbott and Costello; it was my increasing interest in horror movies that would seal the pact forever. My worlds came together.

That the film is excellent entertainment, even outside of being a fun monster mash, is seemingly a happy accident. This is Bud and Lou at their sharpest, and even the flintiest throwaway gag bounces back, if not with laughter, then an amused smile from the viewer. The opening credits reveal the creatures to us in charming animation produced by Walter Lantz, and even makes sure to include the fourth monster at large in the film: Lenore Aubert, a femme fatale scientist who pretends to be enamored of Costello so that she may steal his brain later in the film. This is not out of respect for his grey matter, but rather for his lack of it. Aubert's employer, Count Dracula, wants to place it in the Frankenstein monster so that he will become more "pliable," to use the Count's term. Larry Talbot, the Wolf Man, played with earnest charm by Lon Chaney, Jr., shows up to convince Bud and Lou to help him stop Dracula. Only Costello believes him, as usual, and mistaken identity monster chaos becomes the order of the day.

Everyone in this film, even Bela Lugosi, seems to be having a great time, and maybe that is why it still plays so well today, much more so than the later Abbott and Costello monster films where the elements sank back into the formula they were meant to subvert. While the monsters don't really get to be themselves fully in this family comedy – only one person dies at the Monster's hands and Wolfie only gets to scratch someone, though Drac does get to make a conversion for two points (those points being on the ends of his fangs, that is...) – the film itself, while a comedy, always takes the situation of their mounting threat to humanity seriously. Surprisingly, the monsters are not belittled in any way, but paid the respect due to the truly terrifying amongst the creatures of the night. It seems more like someone just planted Bud and Lou into the middle of the monsters' normal machinations, instead of taking a formula Abbott and Costello comedy and just adding monsters to it. However they did it, the results are still marvelously entertaining and the film is a must for perennial Halloween viewing. It is in my household anyway.

Most importantly, after this film, I knew for certain that Dracula was a real person, if even Dracula himself might not acknowledge it. But, to my joyous surprise, there was so much more to learn about the Universal Monsters. It would just take a little while for me to "collect 'em all" on my viewing list.

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)

Director: Charles Lamont

Universal, 1:20, b/w

Crew Notables: Bud Westmore (makeup)

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Patricia Medina, Walter Slezak, Douglas Dumbrille, Leon Belasco, Tor Johnson, Wee Willie Davis, Marc Lawrence, Henry Corden, Candy Candido (voice of skeleton), Jeff Chandler (narrator)

TC4P Rating: 5/9

Somewhere in my head is a map of the world as drawn by where I think things are... On that map, the Rolling Stones, a band well-known to be from England, live in Chicago, along with Cheap Trick, Warren Beatty, and for some strange reason, Margaret Trudeau (don't ask...). I place things and people where they seem to be according to the news that I hear and sometimes for the strangest reasons imaginable. I could go on forever with the mixed-up inhabitants of this only slightly plausible map, but I won't at this time.

But there is one thing that is clear: the French Foreign Legion, who operate all about the world, but most famously out of Algeria, don't on my map. They operate out of France. This is actually partially true nowadays, but I don't mean their headquarters is stationed there, or that they bivouac there. On my map, they fight their battles there... in the deserts of France. Yes, even in a film where I am told flat-out that they are fighting in a desert in the middle of Africa, somewhere in my head, I believe that they are actually about an hour outside of Paris (which actually is placed in France on my map.) So, in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, even when the title says "Algiers" once the desert action starts, my head tells me that the Legionnaires are back in France.

Average Abbott and Costello, but even average Bud and Lou can still yield some good laughs. Lou's verbal battle with the French word "oui" is amusing, and numerous sight gags pay off well, including an extended mirage sequence (bad backdrops and all) which concludes when they encounter a spitting fish that has stolen a set of false teeth from one of the desert tribesmen. (Once again, don't ask...) There is also a bit where Bud believes that Lou has been blown to smithereens, and the pathos that Abbott wrings out of the by-the-book lines is actually quite touching. At least, until he discovers that Lou is still alive -- boy, does he turn on a dime. But, for a moment, even to someone who has always sided with the pushed-about Costello, I really felt the friendship that had to be at the base of their long partnership, no matter how tired they may have been of each other. It's a feeling that you get from Laurel and Hardy in droves, but that comes rarely in the Abbott and Costello series, and usually from Lou, at that; but there it is, fleetingly, for the taking.

You also have some wrasslin' action with the bear-like Wee Willie Davis and that monstrous icon of Woodsian (Ed, that is) ineptitude, Tor Johnson. Seeing this sequence a day removed from viewing Borat and its nude hotel wrestling shock-a-thon, I couldn't help but flash on the newer film when these two de-shirt and throw down with Bud and Lou (who play fight managers who are trying to locate Davis' Abdullah, cousin to the sheikh that is out to kill them). For those not obsessed with homoerotic affairs of the mat, there is the lovely assemblage of harem girls who become the focus of Lou's attention through much of the film.

My attention? Sorry, it was squarely drawn towards France, and just where the hell they are hiding all those deserts there...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016. This piece was written before I learned about Le Grande Dune du Pilat.]

Rixflix A to Z: Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953)

Director: Charles Lamont

Universal, 1:17, b/w

Crew Notables: Henry Mancini (music, uncredited)

Cast Notables: Abbott and Costello, Robert Paige, Martha Hyer, Mari Blanchard, Horace McMahon, Jack Kruschen, Joe Kirk, Anita Ekberg, Harry Shearer (boy at orphanage)

TC4P Rating: 5/9

It hardly mattered that the boys never got to Mars. Seen first on a Christmas morning in my youth, the planet that Abbott and Costello actually landed on was not the point. Sitting down to watch Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, and basing my reactions off that title alone, a rocket ride into space was a point. The promise of slithery, slobbering alien creatures was a point. Abbott and Costello goofing off in what were sure to be ridiculous-looking, poofy spacesuits was yet another point. That the film's title turned out to be a complete lie really never was an issue to me, though it seems to be the main sticking point with most movie guides, where certain of these overpriced volumes of committee-tossed opinions consider the film a colossal bomb. "But they never even get to Mars...!" etc., etc. Ugh...

Military base handyman Bud and professional orphan Lou bumble their way into stealing a rocketship destined for a Mars landing, but their flight pattern goes wackily awry. Science-ignorant Bud and Lou think they are on Mars, when in fact, they are actually in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, where they mistake the multitude of revelers gussied up in costumes and giant head masks to be Martians of the silliest kind. Circumstances will have them eventually and quite accidentally take to space for real, but they will land on Venus instead, and this is where my head did a swivel as a young'un. Somewhere amongst the space vixens of the second planet, naturally inhabited not just by women, but by gorgeous women only (and all played by Miss Universe entrants), is the voluptuous Anita Ekberg. I know this now, but at that young age (what was I? 10, 11?), I was years away from seeing Fellini's La Dolce Vita. (It didn't matter anyway: Mari Blanchard, who plays Queen Allura, was more my type at the time.) What I did know was that once the parade of high-heeled hotties began, all of my concerns about seeing monsters in the film dissipated. Had I at last found my special purpose?

Watching the film anew, I am struck by how it is actually taken over by another accidental comedy team, that of Horace McMahon and Jack Kruschen as Mugsy and Harry, two escaped convicts who stow away on the rocket to Venus, thereby running afoul of Bud and Lou as both teams do battle for control of the spaceship. And of the movie, it seems. McMahon and Kruschen actually get the sharper of the dialogue sequences, with McMahon's gangster tough having a bottomless reservoir of scientific and arcane knowledge at his fingertips, knowing and explaining to Harry exactly how the blaster ray works, and understanding with only the barest hint that the Venusian queen has placed some form of a curse on Costello. Kruschen, who would be nominated for an Oscar a handful of years later for Billy Wilder's The Apartment, and his character of Harry is a brick wall of a man in both size and brain, but he punctuates all of McMahon's suggestions and directions with the charmingly assertive, and oft repeated, "I am with you!" As a child, I remember saying this line here and there, though I probably had forgotten its origin when I did. (Seeing the film a few times over the intervening years has kept the line in my repertoire.)

Despite the sci-fi elements, the film comes out as merely average, though I don't place it as low as others would have done. This is not because of Bud and Lou, however, for they seem overly tired in this one and are practically going through the paces. What saves it from the bottom of the heap is some nice production design on the part of Universal (some pieces were reused in This Island Earth the following year) and some nice production design on the part of Mother Nature, where the girls are concerned. And also, what saves it is that accidental comedy team of Mugsy and Harry. I am usually with Bud and Lou, but for this time only, I am with them...

RTJ

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11//14/2016.]