Continuing to conclude my weekly "But What Do I Know" through Universal's first 8 Frankensteins...
How often is the last film in a series the one you'll almost definitely have seen first? I was shown Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein long before I ever sought out Frankenstein or Dracula. It's such a part of my childhood's cultural diet I'm unlikely to find something new to say about it, but it's worth noting how smoothly the film went down with the rest of that diet: Han Solo's screaming flight from the Stormtroopers, Bugs Bunny's toying with Elmer Fudd, The Goonies, Young Sherlock Holmes, nearly all of Spielberg's output, even Dangermouse and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. All shared that tone of "Horror Comedy" - so much so it seemed the only tone going - and all may have learnt a thing or two from A and C Meet F. Consider the clip below for (which comes towards the end of the picture, so might be a little SPOILER-y). Sitcom director Charles T. Barton doesn't just juggle the comedy and threat, he protracts the threat long enough for it to become comic, an emotional rollercoaster which seems at least as big an influence on the Indiana Jones franchise as the joke-free adventure serials credited.
It's also worth noting how different this films's strengths are from the kind of routine that had made Bud and Lou stars of Burlesque. Nowadays the pair are best known for two entirely separate contributions: this movie, and a sustained miscommunication from 1937, "Who's On First?", still the most famous sketch written, over eighty years later. Their timing was atomic, but there are no classic spoken routines in AaCMF. Its laughs come almost exclusively from Lou Costello's obliviousness to, or acknowledgement of, danger. Few would put Abbott and Costello in the same comedy pantheon as Laurel and Hardy, but you always knew how the latter would react to a threat - they'd gulp, and go "Mimimi!" or "Whoahhh!" - whereas Costello innovated a language's worth of scare takes, pretty much against his will too; with no spoken material that he trusted enough to fall back upon, he was given no choice. Fortunately his writers (credited here) had a far clearer idea of how funny this was going to be than Lou did, but if you didn't find it funny you weren't going to find the film funny, and with no live audience on set to gauge the laughs, that clearly terrified him.
"No way I'm doing this crap! My five-year-old daughter could write something better" he had apparently complained of the script, so it should also be noted what an improvement this plot is over previous Frankenstein Wednesdays. Paddy Costello might have been able to write better, but Curt Siodmak couldn't. Consider, if you can bare to, we who know, the screenwriter's three previous attempts to bring the Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein’s Monster together: In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Larry Talbot seeks out Frankenstein the Scientist, hoping to be rid of his werewolf curse by learning the secret of eternal death. Finding Frankenstein's Monster frozen in ice, Talbot frees it, then transforms into a werewolf in the midst of transferring his own "life force" into its body. They then fight. In House of Frankenstein Professor Niemann, a deranged former associate of Frankenstein the Scientist, escapes from a dungeon, finds Dracula's skeleton in a travelling circus and briefly brings it back to life to wreak revenge. He then unrelatedly finds the bodies of Larry Talbot and Frankenstein’s Monster frozen in ice and thaws them out, hoping to put the Monster's brain into Talbot's body, but everyone dies before any of this is achieved. In House of Dracula Larry Talbot and Dracula independently approach a doctor completely unconnected with Frankenstein the Scientist, hoping to be cured of their respective spookinesses. The doctor agrees to treat Dracula, Talbot impatiently throws himself into the sea, and looking to retrieve his body the doctor finds Frankenstein's Monster buried in some mud. Talbot is then cured, Dracula turned into a skeleton, and the doctor goes mad and brings the Monster back to life for just over a minute before everything explodes. By contrast, in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Dracula wants to revive Frankenstein's Monster, and Larry Talbot is trying to stop them.
And that's it. It’s not just the simplicity of this story that comes as such a relief, it’s
the dramatic improvements made upon delineating its characters' whole deal: Dracula
wants mastery, the Monster wants a master, and Talbot wants to do good rather
than just kill himself, a mission tragically hampered by his own curse. As a result of this clarity all three actors, Lon Chaney Junior, Glenn Strange, and even Bela Lugosi, give arguably their best performances in the roles for which they are most famous, and it is now three o'clock in the morning so this will have to be continued...
How often is the last film in a series the one you'll almost definitely have seen first? I was shown Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein long before I ever sought out Frankenstein or Dracula. It's such a part of my childhood's cultural diet I'm unlikely to find something new to say about it, but it's worth noting how smoothly the film went down with the rest of that diet: Han Solo's screaming flight from the Stormtroopers, Bugs Bunny's toying with Elmer Fudd, The Goonies, Young Sherlock Holmes, nearly all of Spielberg's output, even Dangermouse and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. All shared that tone of "Horror Comedy" - so much so it seemed the only tone going - and all may have learnt a thing or two from A and C Meet F. Consider the clip below for (which comes towards the end of the picture, so might be a little SPOILER-y). Sitcom director Charles T. Barton doesn't just juggle the comedy and threat, he protracts the threat long enough for it to become comic, an emotional rollercoaster which seems at least as big an influence on the Indiana Jones franchise as the joke-free adventure serials credited.
It's also worth noting how different this films's strengths are from the kind of routine that had made Bud and Lou stars of Burlesque. Nowadays the pair are best known for two entirely separate contributions: this movie, and a sustained miscommunication from 1937, "Who's On First?", still the most famous sketch written, over eighty years later. Their timing was atomic, but there are no classic spoken routines in AaCMF. Its laughs come almost exclusively from Lou Costello's obliviousness to, or acknowledgement of, danger. Few would put Abbott and Costello in the same comedy pantheon as Laurel and Hardy, but you always knew how the latter would react to a threat - they'd gulp, and go "Mimimi!" or "Whoahhh!" - whereas Costello innovated a language's worth of scare takes, pretty much against his will too; with no spoken material that he trusted enough to fall back upon, he was given no choice. Fortunately his writers (credited here) had a far clearer idea of how funny this was going to be than Lou did, but if you didn't find it funny you weren't going to find the film funny, and with no live audience on set to gauge the laughs, that clearly terrified him.
The Casino Theatre, Broadway. Bud and Lou played here
but I just really like this picture.
"No way I'm doing this crap! My five-year-old daughter could write something better" he had apparently complained of the script, so it should also be noted what an improvement this plot is over previous Frankenstein Wednesdays. Paddy Costello might have been able to write better, but Curt Siodmak couldn't. Consider, if you can bare to, we who know, the screenwriter's three previous attempts to bring the Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein’s Monster together: In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Larry Talbot seeks out Frankenstein the Scientist, hoping to be rid of his werewolf curse by learning the secret of eternal death. Finding Frankenstein's Monster frozen in ice, Talbot frees it, then transforms into a werewolf in the midst of transferring his own "life force" into its body. They then fight. In House of Frankenstein Professor Niemann, a deranged former associate of Frankenstein the Scientist, escapes from a dungeon, finds Dracula's skeleton in a travelling circus and briefly brings it back to life to wreak revenge. He then unrelatedly finds the bodies of Larry Talbot and Frankenstein’s Monster frozen in ice and thaws them out, hoping to put the Monster's brain into Talbot's body, but everyone dies before any of this is achieved. In House of Dracula Larry Talbot and Dracula independently approach a doctor completely unconnected with Frankenstein the Scientist, hoping to be cured of their respective spookinesses. The doctor agrees to treat Dracula, Talbot impatiently throws himself into the sea, and looking to retrieve his body the doctor finds Frankenstein's Monster buried in some mud. Talbot is then cured, Dracula turned into a skeleton, and the doctor goes mad and brings the Monster back to life for just over a minute before everything explodes. By contrast, in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Dracula wants to revive Frankenstein's Monster, and Larry Talbot is trying to stop them.
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