Cheap Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (DVD) (Bud Abbott, Lou Costello) (Charles Barton) Price

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Customer Reviews of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein

Best Horror/Comedy EVER!
Bud and Lou's first rendezvous with the Classic Monsters of Universal, if not counting 1941's HOLD THAT GHOST, is a bonanza to be cherished even after it's initial release over 50 years ago. The screenplay of Count Dracula plotting to use Lou's dimwitted brain for the Monster is clever, funny, original, and scary. Lenore Aubert makes a great vampire villainous, and Lugosi's Dracula, Chaney's Wolfman, and Glenn Strange's Frankenstein Monster all help keep the film suspenseful and funny. The chase scenes, the "You and 20 million other guys" joke, and the forest chases, are still uproarious to this day.

The DVD is truly amazing, and Gregory Mank's commentary, and the Documentary "Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters" are fantastic treats for the eye and ears. Yes, that's Vincent Price's voice for the Invisible Man. Look out for the lit cigarette. This is simply the BEST! A true classic!

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Jeepers! The Creepers Are After Bud & Lou!
During the golden age of horror cinema in the 1930s, Universal Studios was king of the heap. But by the time ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN was lensed and released in 1948, Universal's three biggest monster-movie icons--Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, and the Wolfman--had become too familiar and passé to truly frighten an audience. At about the same time, fickle moviegoers had also cranked down their interest in the vaudevillian and burlesque humor of the studio's biggest comedy team, Bud Abbott & Lou Costello. ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, therefore, appeared to be Universal's desperate attempt to wring just a few more dollars, in one fell swoop, from the one-time box-office bonanzas. But this peculiar pairing of the two seemingly incongruous franchises actually turned out to be a masterstroke--ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN became a huge financial success. Horror fans were delighted to see Bud & Lou kid the beloved movie monsters, and for the rest of the viewing audience, watching the comedy duo play against the aging horror icons somehow made the old shtick seem fresh...and maybe even funnier. Thus did Universal birth a NEW hybrid franchise. Though later entries would never quite reach the same level of quality or box-office appeal, the success of this first one pumped new life into the waning careers of Abbott & Costello and helped to pull Universal back from the brink of bankruptcy.

In ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, Bud & Lou play Chick and Wilbur, a couple of bumbling baggage clerks who work at a Florida railway hub. The real fun begins when two strange crates arrive and the boys are told to deliver them to a nearby house-of-horrors exhibit. The crates contain the genuine bodies of Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange), and it turns out that the master vampire and a local mad scientist have a scheme to revive the monster by replacing its brain...with Wilbur's! Goodhearted Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) comes on the scene to help Chick and Wilbur thwart Dracula's evil plan, but it seems that poor Larry is still cursed with Lycanthropy-that is, he still changes into the Wolfman when the moon is full--and only ends up adding to Chick and Wilbur's problems.

The movie works so well because the monsters are played straight, while Bud & Lou adapt their regular slapstick and burlesque humor to the story's "monstrous" situations. The laughs, then, come from the way in which the two comedians interact with or react to the monsters, but the audience is never urged to laugh at the monsters themselves. In other words, the monsters fill the role of straight man--the role usually filled by Bud Abbott--in comedy duo's routines. For the audience, this cinematic juxtaposition of the scary and the humorous can be quite cathartic. When one realizes that it's possible to laugh in the face of things that were once considered scary, it becomes easier to exorcise one's inner emotional demons.

For horror fans and film lovers, another thing that makes the film so scintillating is its cinematic pedigree. In later franchise entries such as ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY or ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN, the comedy team doesn't really meet THE mummy or encounter THE invisible man, but instead have run-ins with lesser generic substitutes. In ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, however, Bud & Lou meet the genuine articles. Bela Lugosi IS Dracula. Lon Chaney, Jr., is THE Wolfman. And though Glenn Strange could never fill Karloff's shoes, the Universal-copyrighted make-up IS the definitive Frankenstein monster. The presence of the original stars and original make-up, although past their prime, adds an extra edge to the gags and the parody.

Despite its silly premise, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is substantially funnier and more enjoyable than the mostly pedestrian comedies being released today. In addition, its humor is "clean" enough to make it a family film, but it is such without being "dumbed down" or puerile. As anybody who has listened to Abbot & Costello's classic routine "Who's On First" can confirm, the duo's humor is quite literate and witty without being the least bit profane.

Universal's DVD release of ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is pretty cool. The digital transfer is fairly clean--some filmic artifacts are present, but not too bad for a film source that is over 50 years old--with very nice continuous-tone black-and-white imagery and good contrast. As with all films produced prior to the advent of widescreen in 1953, the film is presented in the 1.33:1 Academy Ratio--basically the equivalent to the original theatrical ratio--with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack. Cool extras on the disc include a feature commentary from film historian Gregory Mank and an 83-minute Making-of featurette. This one is a must-own for fans of the classic Universal monsters, and any lover of old films or comedies will think it well worth the purchase price.

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Richard Lees thanks for your incite
I just acquired this A&C DVD so I checked into amazon to see what the other customers thought and I enjoyed Richard Lees' comments and I'd like to invite him and all Abbott & Costello fans to www.abbottandcostello.net (the official site) especially the message boards where fans can meet and exchange stories and info. There is a lot to talk about these days with many of the movies and TV shows finally being released on DVD.

And now my first impressions about this DVD:

I tend to agree with other reviewers that say that a less than pristine film print was used to transfer to DVD when compared to the print for "Hit The Ice" on The Best of Abbott & Costello Vol.2, for example. There are the film "artifacts" and less than sharp image with harsh contrasts and not the subtle gray tones you see in some of the movies on the "Best of" packages. When the boys first turn on the lights in McDougall's House of Horrors the picture quality is particularly bad. Oh well, I bought "...Meet Frankenstein" for the special features that likely will not be included when The Best of Abbott and Costello Vol.3 comes out in August. I hope Universal has remastered the film for that edition, it will be the third time I have purchased "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein". Yes, the film is that good. So I give 4 stars for the movie itself and the extras and not give it a full 5 stars because of defects in the print and/or transfering to DVD. Also, this DVD was a little pricey. For example, it cost twice as much (where I live) as "Once Upon a Time In The West" which just came out in a 2 DVD special edition with all the bells and whistles.