Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein ( 1948 )

The Bob Hope classic, The Cat and the Canary ( 1939 ), was one of the first films to successfully combine comedy with mystery and horror. It was such a hit that Paramount quickly plopped the dynamic duo of Hope and Goddard into yet another comedy horror film, The Ghost Breakers ( 1940 ). These films launched an entire genre of pairing comedy stars in horror films, and of all the movies that emerged from this genre,  none was more popular than Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein ( 1948 ).

Universal studios had made their mark in cinema history with their horror classics such as Dracula ( 1931 ), Frankenstein ( 1931 ), The Mummy ( 1932 ), The Invisible Man ( 1933 ), , and The Wolf Man ( 1941 ). These monster movies were so successful that a string of sequels were made for each film. Unfortunately, some of these were not up to par with the originals and by 1946 the producers at Universal sensed that the monster era was coming to a close. Sigh....parting with old ( and prosperous ) friends is such sweet sorrow. 

As early as 1943, Abbott and Costello was toying around with an idea of doing a Broadway show co-starring the famous monsters. Their busy filming schedule at Universal did not allow enough time for the team to mount a live production, but by the late 1940s the ideal opportunity presented itself. Universal embraced the idea of the comedy using the monsters and after several story outlines were developed and discarded ( one by Bertram Milhauser, the screenwriter on numerous Sherlock Holmes films ), an idea by Frederic I. Rinaldo and Robert Lees hit home. Everyone was pleased with the new story except for Lou Costello. As producer Robert Arthur recalled, "Lou hated the script. 'My [ five-year old ] daughter could write a better script than this. You're not serious about making it, are you?' he said" 

Yep, they were. Arthur promised Costello his favorite director, Charles Barton, a tidy sum ( Abbott and Costello were paid $105,000 ), and by the time shooting began in early February 1948, Costello had warmed up to the film. 

What was this sure-fire plot? Abbott and Costello play baggage clerks at a Florida railway station. Mr. McDougal ( Frank Ferguson ), who operates the local House of Horrors, is expecting a shipment of large crates from Europe which he wants delivered in person to his wax museum. Before leaving the warehouse, the duo receive a phone call from Laurence Talbot warning them not to deliver those crates. "They must be destroyed!". This is about the only dialogue poor Larry gets to utter throughout the film. Of course, Larry knows best. The crates contain the coffin - and body - of Dracula, as well as Dr. Frankenstein's Monster. 

When Chick and Wilbur unpack the crates at the wax museum that night, Wilbur sees both the Dracula and the Monster come alive. But before he can convince Chick of what is going on, the fiends escape to Dracula's castle ( yes, he had a castle in Florida too evidently! ) where Sandra Mornay ( Lenore Aubrey ) is waiting. Dracula and Miss Mornay, a surgeon, have teamed up to create the ultimate mind-controlled Monster, but...unlike Dr. Frankenstein, who used the brain of an intelligent man in his experimentations with the original Monster, Miss Mornay intends on using the brain of a man much more innocent and ignorant, someone "with no will of his own, no fiendish intellect". Hmm...who's brain could they have in mind for that? 

With the aid of Laurence Talbot, Chick and Wilbur attempt to destroy Dracula and the Monster before they can steal Wilbur's brain. Little do they know that Talbot transforms into a hairy lycanthrope when the moon is full and bright....and there's an awful lot of full moons in this film!

"Chick! Oh Chick, oooh Chick!!" 

Some of the plot gets a bit muddled up during the film but as most A&C fans know, the story always takes a backseat to the dynamic duo's gags. And this flick is chock full of 'em....memorable one-liners, the famous moving candle routine ( recycled from Hold that Ghost ), Bud's customary slaps, and Costello's inimitable fright-takes. Alas, the script left little room for the team to do any of their famous rapid-fire repartee.

Reprising the classic roles that made them famous in earlier Universal Studio outings were Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolf Man and Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's Monster.

No one could play the tormented Laurence Talbot as well as Lon Chaney Jr. and there was no doubt that he would accept the part, an opportunity to return to one of his favorite screen roles. Unlike the previous Wolf Man films, Chaney's makeup was applied by Bud Westmore and Jack Kevan. Make-up maestro Jack P. Pierce, who had done work on all the previous Universal classic monster films, was notoriously cantankerous and difficult to work with. His makeup applying techniques were extremely time-consuming, often taking several hours every morning to prepare just one monster. Since this film including several monsters in one scene, the production would have been held up for weeks. Bud Westmore, Pierce's protege, was a pioneer at the more comfortable ( and time-saving ) foam latex technique and Old Wolfie and Dracula never looked as good as they did in this classic comedy. 

As for the Monster....Boris Karloff, who had long since retired from playing the part, refused to reprise his role because he feared the film would be a parody of the empathetic beast he had helped to create. He agreed to cooperate and help promote the final picture but refused to watch it, "I'm too fond of the monster. I'm grateful to him for all he did for me, and I wouldn't like to watch anybody make sport of him". Instead, Glenn Strange took over as the Monster. Strange was the fourth actor to play the man-made human pastiche and had played the role in The House of Frankenstein ( 1944 ) and The House of Dracula ( 1945 ). 

Bela Lugosi, who was slated to revive his immortal portrayal of the sanguinary count after a 17 year absence, harbored the same doubts as Karloff but was relieved upon reading the script, "There is no burlesque for me. All I have to do is frighten the boys, a perfectly appropriate activity. My trademark will be unblemished."

Perhaps it was Lugosi who frightened the comedy duo on screen, but off screen it was quite another story. As director Charles Barton recalled, "There were time when I thought Bela was going to have a stroke on the set. You have to understand that working with two zanies like Abbott and Costello was not the normal Hollywood set. They never went by the script and at least once a day there would be a pie fight. Bela of course would have nothing to do with any of this. He would just glare at those involved with his famous deadly stare and the only emotion he would show physically was one of utter disgust."

Glenn Strange and Lon Chaney Jr. enjoyed circulating around the studio in full costume. At the time, Peabody and the Mermaid and One Touch of Venus were in production and it was not unusual for tourists on the Universal backlot tours to spy a few stray monsters meandering around outside the sound stages. 

Production wrapped in just under two months and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein was released on June 15, 1948 to packed theatre houses across America. The film received rave reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter setting the tone when they proclaimed it "a crazy, giddy show that combines chills and laughs in one zany sequence after another". 

Today the Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein has grown in popularity and transformed into a cult status. The film is sub par to some of Abbott and Costello's earlier hits, but the overall monster theme is such a delight that it has consistently risen to the top of fan's favorites. In 2001, The National Film Registry added the title to their list of films selected for future preservation, deeming it "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant". Even Dracula would have been pleased with this. 

This post is our contribution to the fabulous Chaney Blogathon, a celebration of the legendary Lon Chaney senior and junior who made their mark in horror films of the 1920s-1960s. Check out the complete schedule at The Last Drive-In or Movies Silently to read more great posts on the Chaneys. 

The Wolf Man ( 1941 )

"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers at night, may become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright"

Larry Talbot may not have been a man “pure in heart” but he was a man who certainly didn’t expect to be turned into a howling beast when the wolf bane bloomed. Who does for that matter? Poor guy. He was just a luckless lump who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

After 18 years spent abroad in America, Larry Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales, only to find that a dangerous date with destiny awaits him. 

While escorting his sweetheart, the lovely Evelyn Ankers, through a gypsy encampment, he hears the scream of her friend Jenny in the woods, runs to rescue her from a wolf….and gets bitten in the process!

With his newly purchased silver handled wolf-carved cane, he had bludgeoned the wolf to death during the struggle. But lo! the next morning he finds his wound has disappeared and the police are questioning him about the death of Bela (played by the inimitable legend of horror, Bela Lugosi) …..the gypsy he had supposedly mistaken for a wolf. 

To make matters worse, Bela’s mother (Maria Ospenskaya) tells Larry that he will become a wolf as well. But, being our everyday all-American disbelieving film hero, he promptly disregards the wise old gypsy’s warning and the protective charm she gives him, a foolish act that leads him straight into danger. Oh dear, won’t these guys ever learn? 

Filming on The Wolf Man began just before Halloween 1941. It was completed and released in December and went on to become one of the top grossing pictures of the year. 

Dick Foran, a popular B film and cowboy star, was originally intended for the role of Larry Talbot but was replaced one week prior to filming. A good thing too, for Lon Chaney Jr. was very fond and proud of the Wolf Man character and made a career of playing him. He welcomed the opportunity of starring in the many sequels such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and the really horrifying classic, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. 

When Lon Chaney Jr., the son of the famous "Man of a Thousands Faces" Lon Chaney Sr, was offered the lead role in The Wolf Man, he was not yet known for being a horror film actor. He had enjoyed success on stage in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and had appeared in the film adaptation in 1939. Chaney was up for the lead in Universal's remake of The Phantom of the Opera in 1940, but alas..it was his Wolf Man father, Claude Rains who won that choice part. Instead, Chaney starred in Man Made Monster (1941) and director George Waggner was so pleased with his performance that he quickly plopped him into his next picture, The Wolf Man. A legendary horror icon was born! 

Although he played an innocent victim of circumstances on screen, off-screen Chaney was quite a hooligan. He had vandalized studio property one day while drunk and, as punishment, Waggner assigned his star dressing room to Ankers. After spending grueling hours having Jack Pierce apply yak hair and a rubber schnozz to him every morning, and then wait another 45 minutes after shooting to have it removed, Chaney was upset at having his dressing room taken. He had a fondness for playing practical jokes and Ankers quickly became the prime recipient of them. He enjoyed sneaking up on her in full makeup and scaring her. One incident, however, was not Chaney's fault....a 600 pound bear which was used in an eliminated sequence, escaped one afternoon from its trainer and chased Ms.Ankers up a ladder. 

Evelyn Ankers - who played Larry's gal Gwenn Conliffe in the film - was known as the “Scream Queen” of the 1940s and was very busy that decade making horror films such as The Ghost of Frankenstein, Son of Dracula, and The Invisible Man’s Revenge. She also starred in a couple entries in the popular Universal Sherlock Holmes film series: The Pearl of Death and Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror. 

The Wolf Man was not the first film to feature hairy lycanthropes. Six years earlier Universal had made The Werewolf of London starring Henry Hull as a botanist who receives that notorious wolf bite while hunting for a rare flower in the mountains of Tibet. 

This film did not gross much at the box-office, so Universal so they gave it another try and in 1941 the viewing public was much more gullible and embraced The Wolf Man. It was released just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor so it proved to be escapism at its finest. To this day it remains a classic and justly so; with its smothering foggy atmosphere, superb supporting cast (including Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Warren William and Patric Knowles), and excellent set design it leaves a lasting impression. So much so that when the autumn moon is bright, our thoughts naturally turn to the Wolf Man of the night.

This post is our contribution to The Chaney Blogathon, a celebration of father-and-son and the memorable ( and forgettable ) films that they made. The Last Drive-In and Movies Silently have teamed up to host this event, so don't linger around here...head on over to either of their blogs to view a complete schedule of posts!