Rating: 
Summary: Far and away the best Abbott & Costello Horror-Comedy
Review: Lou Costello was always the master of strangulated, speechless terror, so putting Abbott & Costello in a movie with the Wolfman, Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster was inspired. Getting Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange to play the Terror Trio was just icing on the cake. This time around Bud and Lou play Chick Young and Wilbur Gray, a pair of railroad baggage clerks in LaMiranda, Florida, who have to deliver two large crates to MacDougal's House of Horrors. Inside are Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, but of course they escape. To make things worse, Wilbur's beautiful girlfriend, Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert), is really a mad scientist who wants to put Wilbur's brain in the Monster. Fortunately, Lawrence Talbot (Chaney) has arrived from Europe on the trail of the monsters. It is rather amazing how long this film goes with Wilbur being the only one to spot the monsters. The comedy in this movie is something of a departure for the comedy team, because it relies more on situational humor and not as much on the "Who's On First" word play. The scene pantomime scene with Lou on the Monster's lap is great, as is the final chase scene with the boys encountering one monster after another. "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is the first and the best of the boy's comic team-ups, which does not deserve the reputation it has in some quarters for having made the Universal monsters creatures of ridicule. That might be true of later Abbott & Costello monster comedies, but the charge would be truer of "House of Dracula" than this film, which has the same respect for the monsters as does "Young Frankentstein." Trivia Note: While filming the scene where the Monster throws Sandra through the lab window, Strange was knocked over and broke his ankle. Chaney, who had played the Monster in "Ghost of Frankenstein," volunteered to step in and once again don the makeup and he is the one who re-shot the scene that appears in the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Richard Lees thanks for your incite
Review: I just acquired this A&C DVD so I checked into amazon to see what the other customers thought and I enjoyed Richard Lees' comments and I'd like to invite him and all Abbott & Costello fans to www.abbottandcostello.net (the official site) especially the message boards where fans can meet and exchange stories and info. There is a lot to talk about these days with many of the movies and TV shows finally being released on DVD. And now my first impressions about this DVD: I tend to agree with other reviewers that say that a less than pristine film print was used to master to DVD when compared to the print for "Hit The Ice" on The Best of Abbott & Costello Vol.2, for example. There are the film "artifacts" and less than sharp image with harsh contrasts and not the subtle gray tones you see in some of the movies on the "Best of" packages. Oh well, I bought "...Meet Frankenstein" for the special features that likely will not be included when The Best of Abbott and Costello Vol.3 comes out in August. I hope Universal has remastered the film for that edition, it will be the third time I have purchased "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein". Yes, the film is that good. So I give 4 stars for the movie itself and the extras and not give it a full 5 stars because of defects in the print and/or mastering to DVD. Also, this DVD was a little pricey. For example, it cost twice as much (where I live) as "Once Upon a Time In The West" which just came out in a 2 DVD special edition with all the bells and whistles.
Rating:
Summary: Bud and Lou's Fairst and and great scary comedy
Review: I have just recieved Abbott and Costello meets Frankenstein and it is better watching it on DVD than on video, this is because of better sound and picture quality and to see a couple of very rare outtakes and the cometary was very interesting and informative about the actors and actress of it and of course the director. the interviews with daughter of Lou was also very interesting as well as the other people in the documentary. I would highly recommend this DVD if you are an Abbott and Costello fan.
Rating:
Summary: A Little family gratitude for all your kind reviews
Review: Hello All
I was just wandering through amazon and came upon this section and was just delighted to find "A&C meet Frankenstein" getting such nice compliments.
I would like to let you all know that my father Robert Lees and his writing partner and an old family friend, Freddy Rinaldo, wrote this film.
Freddy is no longer with us but my father is still, all of 92 years old, and is thrilled that after all these years you all like the film.
A little addenda:
You all must remember that A&C were essentially radio comedians,
and it was from his training in radio that Costello had the bad habit of coming unglued if he didn't consistantly get laughs from the crew for each gag each take, no matter how many takes were involved in getting a scene right.. For him the crew was a live audience, so if he didn't take the house down, he would put in another piece of business and reinvent the scene on the spot until he did - and he was very inventive! I don't know how successfull they were, but they tried to take him aside and explain how important it was to actually follow the script!! Dad said that Lugosi enjoyed this aspect of Costello very much although I'm not so sure whether the director did, or the writers either for that matter.
Both Dad and Fred respected the "horror/terror" genre in literature very much noting to me when I was younger how complex and interesting the form had become in the hands of writers like Dunsynane Tolstoy Lovecraft Saki,or Poe to name a few.
Tolstoy wrote some strange and luminous things in this old form, once a short story about a Vampyre.
But in those days and by the time Universal Studios got through exploiting it all, "The Wolfman meets Dracula, meets Frankenstein,meets the Mummy, meets the Andrews Sisters" well, lets just say that the bloom was well off the rose.....
And so the object for them was not to parody the genre (at least the serious part) but to parody what Universal Studios had by this time done to the genre....
One of my favorite parts in the film is that sublimely dysfunctional chase scene at the end.
And its true, they had a blast writing the movie.
Rating:
Summary: a loving tribute and A& Cs best!
Review: kudos must still go tO the universal exec who came up with this.
the film is a loving sendoff/tribute to the universal horror icons and A&Cs best film by far.
Lugosi actuall gives a bette rperfromance here as the count than he did in the original Dracula, which was static and over acted. A lot of crititcs have said that Lugosi played it straight here, but that's not quite true. he draped his cape over his nose
(something, despite the cliches, he never did in the original) and has several great comedic lines ('what we need is young blood and brains'). Lugosi always considered himself a comedian and for once he is given that opportunity, thus blowing away the prevelant attitudes that he was a not so bright actor that didn't know a lick of english and thus 'accidentally' gave an eerie delivery.
Chaney too is very good. he was and remains an underrated actor. watch him tear up in the macabre 'spider babay' or his performance in ' high noon' 'the defiant ones' and 'of mice and men' (of course) to see how great an actor he could really be.
and everything with A & C is perfect here. sadly, they would go way down hill and become tiresome shortly after.
ONE MAJOR COMPLAINT:
the make up of Bud Westmore doesn't hold a candle to Jack pierce.
Universal uncerimoniousely sacked Pierce because he was no longer 'quick enough'.
oh, Westmore was quicker and it shows!
Rating:
Summary: A classic of mixed Genre
Review: In addition to the fine cast there is one reason why this movie works so well. Abbott & Costello play it as straight comedy The classics of horror play it as straight horror. The mix works well and the actors are to blame a movie's job is to entertain, this one passes. Watch it and enjoy
Rating:
Summary: great movie
Review: can't say nothing bad about this movie, movie goer's found it great that all their famous monsters meet up...and add some comdey....nothing taken seriously just good fun.
glenn strange as the moster...awsome..!
Rating:
Summary: Jeepers! The Creepers Are After Bud & Lou!
Review: During the golden age of horror cinema in the 1930s, Universal Studios was king of the heap. But by the time ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN was lensed and released in 1948, Universal's three biggest monster-movie icons--Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, and the Wolfman--had become too familiar and passé to truly frighten an audience. At about the same time, fickle moviegoers had also cranked down their interest in the vaudevillian and burlesque humor of the studio's biggest comedy team, Bud Abbott & Lou Costello. ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, therefore, appeared to be Universal's desperate attempt to wring just a few more dollars, in one fell swoop, from the one-time box-office bonanzas. But this peculiar pairing of the two seemingly incongruous franchises actually turned out to be a masterstroke--ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN became a huge financial success. Horror fans were delighted to see Bud & Lou kid the beloved movie monsters, and for the rest of the viewing audience, watching the comedy duo play against the aging horror icons somehow made the old shtick seem fresh...and maybe even funnier. Thus did Universal birth a NEW hybrid franchise. Though later entries would never quite reach the same level of quality or box-office appeal, the success of this first one pumped new life into the waning careers of Abbott & Costello and helped to pull Universal back from the brink of bankruptcy. In ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, Bud & Lou play Chick and Wilbur, a couple of bumbling baggage clerks who work at a Florida railway hub. The real fun begins when two strange crates arrive and the boys are told to deliver them to a nearby house-of-horrors exhibit. The crates contain the genuine bodies of Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange), and it turns out that the master vampire and a local mad scientist have a scheme to revive the monster by replacing its brain...with Wilbur's! Goodhearted Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) comes on the scene to help Chick and Wilbur thwart Dracula's evil plan, but it seems that poor Larry is still cursed with Lycanthropy-that is, he still changes into the Wolfman when the moon is full--and only ends up adding to Chick and Wilbur's problems. The movie works so well because the monsters are played straight, while Bud & Lou adapt their regular slapstick and burlesque humor to the story's "monstrous" situations. The laughs, then, come from the way in which the two comedians interact with or react to the monsters, but the audience is never urged to laugh at the monsters themselves. In other words, the monsters fill the role of straight man--the role usually filled by Bud Abbott--in comedy duo's routines. For the audience, this cinematic juxtaposition of the scary and the humorous can be quite cathartic. When one realizes that it's possible to laugh in the face of things that were once considered scary, it becomes easier to exorcise one's inner emotional demons. For horror fans and film lovers, another thing that makes the film so scintillating is its cinematic pedigree. In later franchise entries such as ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY or ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN, the comedy team doesn't really meet THE mummy or encounter THE invisible man, but instead have run-ins with lesser generic substitutes. In ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, however, Bud & Lou meet the genuine articles. Bela Lugosi IS Dracula. Lon Chaney, Jr., is THE Wolfman. And though Glenn Strange could never fill Karloff's shoes, the Universal-copyrighted make-up IS the definitive Frankenstein monster. The presence of the original stars and original make-up, although past their prime, adds an extra edge to the gags and the parody. Despite its silly premise, ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is substantially funnier and more enjoyable than the mostly pedestrian comedies being released today. In addition, its humor is "clean" enough to make it a family film, but it is such without being "dumbed down" or puerile. As anybody who has listened to Abbot & Costello's classic routine "Who's On First" can confirm, the duo's humor is quite literate and witty without being the least bit profane. Universal's DVD release of ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is pretty cool. The digital transfer is fairly clean--some filmic artifacts are present, but not too bad for a film source that is over 50 years old--with very nice continuous-tone black-and-white imagery and good contrast. As with all films produced prior to the advent of widescreen in 1953, the film is presented in the 1.33:1 Academy Ratio--basically the equivalent to the original theatrical ratio--with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack. Cool extras on the disc include a feature commentary from film historian Gregory Mank and an 83-minute Making-of featurette. This one is a must-own for fans of the classic Universal monsters, and any lover of old films or comedies will think it well worth the purchase price.
Rating:
Summary: PERFECT TOGETHER
Review: If you love this little movie than I can't add anything more to your bevy of reasons for liking it. If you haven't seen it, don't think too much about trying it. I've never heard anyone complain that they weren't at least amused. I projected this at a get together a few years ago and my son and his friend ( 9 and 10 ) loved it. That says it all.
A funny, stylish amusement from an bygone era that looks like it must have been great fun (the '40's that is).
Abbott and Costello's humor in starightforward and basic but their personalities are engaging like friendly classroom clowns.
The monster characters are American film icons and display their best 1940's Universal Studios side as well as a surprisingly adept straight man dimension that allows them to exist in perfect harmony with the satire all around them.
Let's get cornny - It's a delightful, nostalgic,gentle old hollywood B picture that looks great, delivers good clean fun
and won't bore the kids. See it for Halloween instead of those cheap shots in the horror aisle of the video store for a change.
Serious film lovers should take a look too. The pace is remarkably smooth and builds to its' climax like a roller caoster cresting a hill until zooming from gag to action to gag in cross cuts that are flawlessly timed. The black and white photography is portrait studio quality and the score is like another character adding it's oppinion to the action. Overall it is a showcase for slick,seasoned movie making in its productive heyday.
Here's one last item with which to intrigue you- among my favorites of all time are 2001,a Space Odyssey, Metropolis,Citizen Kane,the 39 Steps, Jaque Tati's Playtime and this.
Rating:
Summary: Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyy Abbott
Review: This is one of the great movies combining horror and slapstick heroes into one. The last time I saw it was last summer in an outdoor setting on a beautiful summer night at a local museum. I must point out that there is a major error in this movie. When Dracula puts the bite on his lovely assistant in her bedroom, (after she pretends to go to bed with a headache), they show the biting scene not straight up but as a reflection in her dresser mirror. As we all know, a vampire has no reflection... but he does here. Hey, I'll bite. Who am I to complain? It's a wonderful picture.
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