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, by 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 laughingstocks 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 tone 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 classic that I say has not aged well. I'm just glad this was made before the Creature fro 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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