If you go What:
The News-Gazette Film Series presents 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' (1948).
When:
1 and 7 p.m.July 13.
Where:
Virginia Theatre, 203 W. Park Ave., C.
Tickets:
$7.
Box office: thevirginia.org or 217-356-9063.
All those bizarre headlines you've seen starting "Florida man ..." pale in comparison when two Florida men encounter a trio of monsters in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" -- the next entry in The News-Gazette Film Series, screening at 1 and 7 p.m. July 13 at the Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign.
When bumbling shipping clerks Chick (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur (Lou Costello) deliver two crates to a Florida house-of-horrors attraction, things quickly go wrong. One crate contains Dracula's coffin (as well as the count himself, played by Bela Lugosi) and the other Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange). Unfortunately for Chick and Wilbur, Dracula (Bela Lugosi) absconds with the monster, and the owner of the horror attraction has the boys arrested when his crates turn up empty. Dracula plans to turn the monster into his servant, but one with a more docile brain than his current murderous one. And, of course, who has a more malleable brain than Wilbur? Chick, however, is more concerned and perturbed about the two beautiful women inexplicably wooing Wilbur.
Abbott and Costello, stars of stage, screen and radio, were the most popular comedy team of the early 1940s. Both Universal, their home studio, and MGM, to which Universal loaned them, included their actual names in titles to attract audiences. And their films had saved Universal from going bankrupt more than once.
Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman had also been extremely popular film characters in the 1930s and early '40s, and Universal Pictures had already made several films combining their monsters in their own horror universe. But when the studio was sold and became Universal International in 1946, the new management aimed for a more prestigious image and so axed its B-movie series, including the monsters.
Abbott and Costello were too profitable for them to dismiss, however, even though their box office had been declining. When the studio faced financial difficulties again soon after the change, the idea of having the comedy team encounter the popular monsters in a horror comedy seemed like a potentially profitable idea.
The film was the second-cheapest Universal made in 1948 and its biggest box office draw for the previous three years; Abbott and Costello had once again saved Universal from bankruptcy. Ironically, though, it was almost never made, since neither Abbott nor Costello liked the script (originally called "The Brain of Frankenstein"). Costello especially disliked it for having very little of their usual verbal humor. They finally gave in to financial inducements, however, along with the employment of John Grant, their regular comedy writer, and Charles Barton, their favorite director.
A further irony is that in 1942, Costello himself had proposed such a monstrous merger in a stage play to get the pair back to their theater roots, but movies and radio kept them too busy to do anything for the stage.
Costello was a master of the "scare" take, which he had developed in "Hold That Ghost" (1941) -- which also originated the moving-candle gag that is a highlight here. The scare take consisted of Costello's reaction to some horrific creature or sight that Abbott never seemed to notice or believe in. In fact, much of the humor in the first part of the film comes from this disjunction:
Wilbur sees monsters and freaks out while Chick doesn't and just disparages him, and the audience knows that Wilbur is telling the truth about what he sees.
The monsters are all played by actors already well associated with the roles and very comfortable in them: Lugosi as Dracula, Strange in his third outing as Frankenstein's monster, and Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot, the Wolfman. Except for one scare take from the monster the first time he sees Wilbur and the werewolf fumbling his attacks on Wilbur, they are all played straight as in their own horror series.
"Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" blends horror, romantic comedy and nostalgia into a cross-genre classic. The trade papers and audiences of the time loved it; the New York Times and Chicago Sun-Times panned it; and it did run into censorship problems in some countries. But it was so successful that Abbott and Costello went on to meet various other monsters and creepy characters until 1955s "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy" finally ended the series.
Some horror aficionados -- including even Chaney --
accused Abbot and Costello of putting an end to the horror genre. Boris Karloff refused to see the film, although Universal bribed him to stand in front of a theater showing it for a publicity photo, and he later starred in "Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff" (1949) and "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1953).
In later years, though, "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" has come to be regarded as the pair's best film and the best horror-film spoof. In 2001, the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress deemed it historically, culturally or aesthetically important and added it to the National Film Registry.