Public demand for low-down comedy wih a high silly factor during WWII helped journeymen comedy team Bud Abbott (straight-man) and Lou Costello (butt) over-perform at the box-office, especially in the early 1940s. Limited talents, they caught a second wind in the late ‘40s, when someone at their home studio thought to combine them with Universal’s signature monsters. (Five MEETs in total, the fourth over at Warners.*) FRANKENSTEIN, first & best of the lot, churning out pots of money, even with few good notions on what to do with this can’t-miss set-up. Raspy-voiced Abbott keeps the pace up (always his strong suit) while Costello holds to his usual too-scared-to-get-the-words-out shtick, but played against the Frankenstein monster, Dracula and Wolfman, he generates pretty decent laughs. But that’s about it for comic ideas; the rest boilerplate A&C. For some amusement, note that Wolfman (still Lon Chaney Jr.) grows fur under four full moons over five or six days. A Full Moon record! (And does so in unusually smooth Man-to-Wolf dissolve transitions. That Bela Lugosi is Dracula for only the second time. It’s also his last major studio pic. And that Bud Westmore’s simplified monster makeups (based on masks), aren’t a patch on Jack P. Pierce’s built-from-scratch every day originals.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: *Least if not last, it was . . . MEETS CAPTAIN KIDD/’53. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/09/abbott-and-costello-meet-captain-kidd.html
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