We have a family get together on Saturday and I was looking for a movie for the grandkids in case things get too quiet.\u00a0 By luck I had recorded this monster themed comedy movie back in October.\u00a0 Now of course I\u2019ve seen this movie many times.\u00a0 One of my local tv stations back in New York City during my childhood would cycle through the Abbott and Costello movies on Sundays.\u00a0 Annoyingly, the movie always coincided with church which really made me wonder about God\u2019s priorities and sense of humor.<\/p>\n
So, I put it on tonight.\u00a0 And just as I remembered, it\u2019s the perfect movie for boys between the ages of seven and eleven.\u00a0 All of the jokes are corny as hell and the monsters are about as tame as rabbits.\u00a0 But Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman still look the part.\u00a0 And Lou Costello sells his constant hysterical fear with his signature screams of panic and running around in circles.<\/p>\n
The plot is laughably bad.\u00a0 Dracula and the Frankenstein monster have been shipped to America disguised as exhibits for a \u201cHouse of Horror.\u201d\u00a0 Bud and Lou work for the company that is supposed to deliver them.\u00a0 The Wolfman is in America to foil the plan and Lou\u2019s girlfriend Sandra is a mad scientist who is working with Dracula to re-energize the weakened monster.\u00a0 In addition, she has selected Lou\u2019s brain to be transplanted into the monster\u2019s body to give it a more controllable personality for Dracula\u2019s plans.\u00a0 Of course, Lou doesn\u2019t know about these plans.<\/p>\n
Add in a beautiful insurance claims investigator named Joan who is searching for the missing monster exhibits and a non-evil medical doctor who is assisting Sandra and you have a showdown at the island castle laboratory with Sandra, Dracula, Frankenstein\u2019s monster and Lou in the operating room when Larry Talbot (the Wolfman), Bud Abbott and the Doctor break in and stop the surgery.\u00a0 Eventually the Wolfman grabs Dracula in his bat form and the two of them fall from the castle heights into the ocean.\u00a0 The doctor rescues Bud and Lou from the monster by setting on fire the dock that the monster is trapped on.\u00a0 In the last scene Bud and Lou are in a rowboat and are rejoicing that Dracula, Frankenstein\u2019s monster and the Wolfman are dead and they don\u2019t have to be scared anymore.\u00a0 Suddenly the Invisible Man chimes in that he wants to join the fun and the boys jump overboard.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t give a spoiler alert because the plot really doesn\u2019t matter at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s just an excuse for Universal Studios to cross-pollinate their monster movie franchise with their most successful comedy team.\u00a0 They would follow this up with several of the other monster characters (the Mummy, the Invisible Man and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) meeting the \u201cboys\u201d but I would say this first effort was the most successful and most enjoyable.\u00a0 It works as an Abbott and Costello comedy and as an homage to the Universal horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m very hopeful that the younger grandkids will enjoy this ancient comedy.\u00a0 I\u2019ll report back with an update.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have a family get together on Saturday and I was looking for a movie for the grandkids in case things get too quiet.\u00a0 By<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[4738,428,418,419,431,43,38,1355,417,420],"class_list":["post-31487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-abbott-and-costello","tag-bela-lugosi","tag-dracula","tag-frankenstein","tag-lon-chaney-jr","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-universal-classic-monster-movies","tag-wolfman"],"yoast_head":"\n