"No way I'll do that c**p. My little girl could write something better than this."
So proclaimed chubby Lou Costello upon reading the script for the movie that turned around the duo's career, which had been deep in the doldrums at the time. Apparently, $50,000 and the promise that Charles Barton would direct eventually changed his mind, and the movie went on to become Universal International's second highest grossing film of the year.
Shame.
Even as a kid, I never really took to Abbott & Costello not once I was old enough to perceive the difference between their brand of humour and that of Laurel and Hardy, the double act to whom they are usually compared. There's something distinctly mean-spirited about this couple, as if they're friends only through circumstance, and that neither of them would hesitate to abandon the other the moment something better came along. The violence between Laurel & Hardy was always cartoonish and borne out of frustration; you never doubted that, at heart, they were friends who cared for one another just look at how often they stuck up for each other when a third party became involved in the fun but, more often than not, Abbott & Costello's violence is just plain spiteful. Bud Abbott slaps little Lou to keep him in line and for the slightest reason, and the hapless Lou accepts it all like a frightened child who fails to realise that he doesn't have to. A&C and L&H are poles apart and, if it wasn't for the fact that they worked for different studios, you might be forgiven for thinking that A&C lived off the scraps that L&H rejected.
This movie the team's 22nd, and their fourth with Barton is generally regarded to be their best effort, but it's hard to see why. It was innovative in its day for poking fun at Universal's established movie monsters (whose movie careers, like that of the comedy duo, had declined considerably over the previous five years), something that had never been done before but, apart from a couple of one-liners ("You and 20 million other guys," says Lou after wolfman Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) explains how he turns into a wolf every night when the moon is full), the quality of the gags is nothing special. Too much time is spent on Lou pulling those faces of his, and then trying to convince Bud that he isn't imagining all the spooks that mysteriously disappear when the straight man finally appears on the scene.
The storyline has Bud and Lou playing a couple of railway baggage attendants who are instructed to deliver a couple of crates which contain Dracula (Bela Lugosi who got the role when the producers discovered he wasn't dead after all) and Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange). Lou's girlfriend (Lenore Aubert) works at the house, and has plans to transplant his brain into the monster. Also involved is the wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) in a good guy role for a change. There's a lot of padding, even though the movie runs less than 90 minutes, and it's all too evident.
On a more positive note, the monsters play it straight, which strengthens the film considerably; the special effects for this movie are actually pretty good for the period, although Dracula's transformation from bat to human is obviously a cartoon; and Jane Randolph, in her last role before retiring to marry a Spaniard named Jaime del Amo and lead the life of a socialite, looks pretty hot. The climactic chase sequence is also well-staged, and goes at least some way towards atoning for the tedious abundance of mugging and slapstick that precedes it.
So proclaimed chubby Lou Costello upon reading the script for the movie that turned around the duo's career, which had been deep in the doldrums at the time. Apparently, $50,000 and the promise that Charles Barton would direct eventually changed his mind, and the movie went on to become Universal International's second highest grossing film of the year.
Shame.
Even as a kid, I never really took to Abbott & Costello not once I was old enough to perceive the difference between their brand of humour and that of Laurel and Hardy, the double act to whom they are usually compared. There's something distinctly mean-spirited about this couple, as if they're friends only through circumstance, and that neither of them would hesitate to abandon the other the moment something better came along. The violence between Laurel & Hardy was always cartoonish and borne out of frustration; you never doubted that, at heart, they were friends who cared for one another just look at how often they stuck up for each other when a third party became involved in the fun but, more often than not, Abbott & Costello's violence is just plain spiteful. Bud Abbott slaps little Lou to keep him in line and for the slightest reason, and the hapless Lou accepts it all like a frightened child who fails to realise that he doesn't have to. A&C and L&H are poles apart and, if it wasn't for the fact that they worked for different studios, you might be forgiven for thinking that A&C lived off the scraps that L&H rejected.
This movie the team's 22nd, and their fourth with Barton is generally regarded to be their best effort, but it's hard to see why. It was innovative in its day for poking fun at Universal's established movie monsters (whose movie careers, like that of the comedy duo, had declined considerably over the previous five years), something that had never been done before but, apart from a couple of one-liners ("You and 20 million other guys," says Lou after wolfman Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) explains how he turns into a wolf every night when the moon is full), the quality of the gags is nothing special. Too much time is spent on Lou pulling those faces of his, and then trying to convince Bud that he isn't imagining all the spooks that mysteriously disappear when the straight man finally appears on the scene.
The storyline has Bud and Lou playing a couple of railway baggage attendants who are instructed to deliver a couple of crates which contain Dracula (Bela Lugosi who got the role when the producers discovered he wasn't dead after all) and Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange). Lou's girlfriend (Lenore Aubert) works at the house, and has plans to transplant his brain into the monster. Also involved is the wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) in a good guy role for a change. There's a lot of padding, even though the movie runs less than 90 minutes, and it's all too evident.
On a more positive note, the monsters play it straight, which strengthens the film considerably; the special effects for this movie are actually pretty good for the period, although Dracula's transformation from bat to human is obviously a cartoon; and Jane Randolph, in her last role before retiring to marry a Spaniard named Jaime del Amo and lead the life of a socialite, looks pretty hot. The climactic chase sequence is also well-staged, and goes at least some way towards atoning for the tedious abundance of mugging and slapstick that precedes it.