In a nutshell: Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) wants to give the enslaved Frankenstein's Monster (Glenn Strange) a more advanced brain, while Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), aka the Wolf Man, seeks a cure for his curse. Those goals bring the monsters into the path of legendary comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and hijinx ensue.
I gotta be honest. I never much cared for the films of Abbott and Costello, seeing them mostly when they ran on WPIX Channel 11 on Sundays when I was a kid, and I only review it now because I have been repeatedly asked to do so for the past several years, so I'm just getting it over with. In fact, the only cinematic comedy performers who were already antiques by the time I discovered them that I genuinely enjoyed were the Marx Brothers and Danny Kaye, but they are not germane to this essay. A&C always came off to me as something my grandparents might find funny, but I always hated Abbott treating Costello in a manner that today is rightly considered bullying, plus Abbott's characters were always assholes, so what was there to like? Pairing two comedians whom I could not stand with monsters that I adored was a recipe for disaster, but in watching this film again I earnestly hoped that over four decades away from it would give me a fresh perspective.
Nope.
If anything, my resentment of the film has only deepened, as I found little funny about it, and seeing the classic Universal monsters, once legit figures of terror, reduced to laughing stocks was galling to this 57-year-old monster kid. Even with modern horror characters, it's always a sign of over-saturation and a character/franchise being played-out when a horror icon becomes used as a comedic McGuffin or as a punchline, and in the case of this movie, we get three of the all-time greats rendered into stoogery.
The Wolf Man emerges from the bathroom. Just imagine the kind of savage dump a werewolf would take.
It broke my heart to see these former titans of the gothic macabre being depicted as bad sitcom guest stars, with the Wolfman somewhat maintaining his dignity. His crashing through the castle window in pursuit of Dracula, thus possibly ensuring both of their dooms, was one of the few elements in the film that really felt like something out of a classic Universal monster movie. The rest was a farce that, if I am being honest, has not aged particularly well, but that is okay if you are into that sort of thing.
A brilliant visual gag and easily the funniest moment in the entire film. If you seen the movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
However, the honest bottom line is that I am simply not the audience for this film that most others hail as a classic, a cherished effort that I say has not aged well. I'm just glad this was made before the Creature from the Black Lagoon made his debut, otherwise he too would have been dragged down with his forebears. I recommend this for Universal Monsters completists only.
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