ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD (1952)

Excruciating. Slipping fast from their ‘40s peak and tv-bound this year, A&C brought their MEET Series of genre parodies over to Warners (from home studio Universal) for this laugh-free one-off. Quite a drop from the reasonably funny/frightful MEET FRANKENSTEIN/’48 to this botch, with dumbed-downed physical business aimed strictly at the 7-and-under set, and Charles Laughton’s Captain Kidd yelling all his lines to steal focus. Worse, it’s also a quasi-musical, with tuneless ditties for a pair of insipid ingenues (Fran Warren, never seen again; Bill Shirley, major pipes/zero personality) who wind up in the middle of an island treasure hunt. (His love letter and Laughton’s treasure map keep getting mixed up.) Shot cheap in ‘SuperCineColor’ (an improved single-pac sub-rival to TechniColor), its compromised tonal palette not so far off the outmoded 2-strip TechniColor process. Ironically, a process now largely recalled from Douglas Fairbanks’ comic pirate adventure THE BLACK PIRATE/’26. And yet, the best things in here come via lenser Stanley Cortez in some handsome, static shots of four-masted ships under a moonlit sky.* (Or did the special effects unit get them?) Charles Lamont, who made fistfuls of A&C when not megging fistfuls of MA AND PA KETTLE, no doubt in his sleep, seems reluctant to engage with the action in any way at all. ‘Plant camera/let boys play.’ And what a nasty edge Abbott now brings to his comic exasperation. Not an ounce of joy left anywhere you look.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned, best of the series: ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Somehow, Laughton took note of Stanley Cortez in the midst of this, hiring him as cinematographer for the dreamlike terror & wonder in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER/’55.