When you think of the great Universal horror icons, who springs to mind? Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man, to be sure. Probably the Invisible Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, too. Maybe even the Phantom of the Opera.
But what about Abbott and Costello? Sure, the gruff straight man Bud Abbott and the childlike buffoon Lou Costello are better known for their complex linguistic routines like “Who’s On First,” but between 1940 and 1956, the duo starred in 37 movies, almost exclusively for Universal Pictures. These films covered a variety of genres, including science fiction and Westerns, so it’s no surprise that the studio would put them in six horror pictures. And these weren’t just throwaway larks. They were proper Universal horror movies, with the studio’s top-line monsters and talent, including Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
All of Abbott and Costello’s monster movies are worth watching, but star-driven studio movie making tends to prefer quantity over quality, which means that some pictures work better than others. Here they all are, ranked from “a collection of likable bits” to “an all-time horror comedy masterpiece.”
6. Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)
The Invisible Man may not be much to look at (insert rimshot), but I think he’s the creepiest of the Universal Monsters. Like Dr. Jekyll or Victor Frankenstein, Jack Griffin is a scientist driven by boundless curiosity and moral certitude. But unlike those disgraced doctors, Griffin cannot blame his downfall on the monster he makes. Instead, as his invisibility serum hides his body, it reveals his true self — a hateful, murderous man who acts with impunity.
Most directors can’t pull off that level of psychological horror, so it’s no surprise that the monster in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man falls flat. We have another good man here, a boxer named Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz), who’s been framed for the murder of his manager. Nelson takes Griffin’s invisibility serum to hide out while private detectives Abbott and Costello hunt down the real killer.
Although Tommy goes mad almost immediately, with no slow descent, Meet the Invisible Man does a fine job tying its gags to its scares, as Abbott and Costello deal with their client’s increasingly anti-social behavior. When a passerby overhears Tommy’s wild declarations of revenge, Bud pretends to be a hack actor, badly bellowing Shakespeare monologues. When Tommy demands a steak, Lou has to endure the waiter’s judgment at his gluttonous order.
But for all its potential, Meet the Invisible Man simply isn’t as funny or scary or suspenseful as it should be. The gags become tired pretty quickly, and Franz doesn’t have the gravitas to be menacing or tragic as the title monster.
5. Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)
It’s hard to think of a sub-genre with more stinkers than horror comedy. Sure, there are some greats in there, but for every Evil Dead II, there’s a Jack Frost or Scary Movie 4 — a flick that confuses mere observation or provocation with joke telling. Too often, the two genres work against each other, with the seriousness of the horror undercutting the silliness of the gag, and vice versa.
For all their success, not even Abbott and Costello could escape this problem, as demonstrated in Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This entry should be good — after all, the comedy duo had perfected their chemistry and timing by 1953, and they had both the backing of Universal Pictures and another chance to work with the legendary Boris Karloff. Furthermore, not only does setting the story amid the suffragette movement add interesting shading to its supporting characters, but Karloff is in top form here. Where Jekyll is usually a decent man whose experiments create an evil double, Karloff plays him as a sniveling society man, who willfully unleashes Hyde because he knows the monster will get away with what he cannot.
Sadly, Abbott and Costello fail to make good use of that set-up. Forgoing their usual verbal dexterity, the duo rely almost entirely on slapstick and pratfall bits, and not very good ones at that. They bumble through the movie, performing mildly amusing gags that blend poorly with the movie’s darker premise. One wishes these were two separate movies — a jokefest for Bud and Lou, and a proper Dr. Jekyll film for Karloff.
4. Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)
After missing out on the monster jamboree that was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Boris Karloff joins in the fun two years later… sort of. Despite the movie’s title, Karloff appears only in a handful of scenes, and he isn’t actually the killer. But as the turban-clad hypnotist Swami Talpur, Karloff makes the most of his brief screen time; his rich voice and menacing presence create a striking contrast to Costello’s goofy antics.
Director Charles Barton captures this contrast in the movie’s funniest scene, in which Talpur hypnotizes Costello’s disgraced bellboy Freddie Phillips in an attempt to make the patsy kill himself, thus framing him for some recent murders. His baritone issuing a low rumble, Talpur orders the helpless Freddie to put a noose around his neck and jump, but the crossbeam collapses under the portly man’s weight. Freddie obeys Talpur’s command to go to the window and jump, but he jumps backwards instead of forward, flailing on the bedroom floor instead of splatting on the pavement. When an exasperated Talpur asks Freddie how he wants to die, the entranced Costello retorts, “Old age.”
This dark humor sets Meet the Killer apart from other Abbott and Costello comedies, with one set piece involving dead bodies being rearranged as Freddie leaves and enters his room, and another with he and Abbott disguising corpses as fellow bridge players (“Oh, they’re going to murder you,” a bystander quips upon spying Freddie’s poor hand).
Those jokes were enough to get Meet the Killer banned in Denmark, but weren’t enough to overcome the movie’s uninteresting plot, its recycled gags, and its strange decision to keep the duo separate for long stretches of the film.
3. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
The final Abbott and Costello monster movie is one of their best. Meet the Mummy drops the pair into a classic Universal Mummy flick, as two Americans who run afoul of bandits searching for the treasure of Princess Ara, guarded by the mummy Klaris. When Costello accidentally frames Abbott for murder and comes in possession of a medallion with directions to a map to Ara’s tomb, the two must evade both the police and the tomb raiders.
With the exception of maybe Meet Frankenstein, Meet the Mummy keeps Bud and Lou tied to the plot better than any of the other monster movies, while still given them plenty of space for set-pieces. Some of the gags include vaudeville-style visual bits, as when the two don disguises to escape their attackers and end up chasing each other. Others are their classic verbal routines, such an argument about which pick(axe) to pick.
It’s an effectively coherent movie, one that almost seamlessly combines cool creature effects, an intriguing plot, and solid gags. No one part feels out of place, resulting in a genuinely unique horror comedy.
2. Hold that Ghost (1941)
Left to right: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Evelyn Ankers, Joan Davis and Richard Carlson in HOLD THAT GHOST (1941), directed by Arthur Lubin.
The first Abbott and Costello horror comedy, Hold That Ghost is more William Castle by way of Scooby Doo than their later Universal entries. Instead of real monsters, this movie features gangsters masquerading as ghosts to scare the boys and their friends away from a cache of stolen cash.
That simple plot provides fertile ground for plenty of gags, including an impressive in-camera effect in which a room rearranges itself while Lou’s back is turned. Even a candle bit that the duo will perfect in later movies — in which a candle seemingly moves by itself, terrifying Lou and angering Bud — works here, thanks in part to a outstanding supporting performance by Joan Davis. A future star of her own comedy show, Davis has great comic chemistry with Bud, and director Arthur Lubin wisely gives her plenty of screentime to perform her own jokes.
In fact, Hold that Ghost’s only shortcomings come from the conventions of 1940s Hollywood. Like most comedy movies of the era, the film has its roots in vaudeville and review shows, and thus audiences expected a few song and dance routines. While the songs by the Waters Sisters are innocuous, if a bit bland to modern listeners, the appeal of singer Ted Lewis eludes me, even before he performs the racist number “Me and My Shadow.” Fortunately, you can easily fast forward past these bits to get to the spectral set pieces.
1. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Meet Frankenstein would deserve a place in horror movie history even if Abbott and Costello weren’t involved. The Avengers: Infinity War of its time, Meet Frankenstein is a monster lover’s dream, bringing together Lon Chaney Jr’s Wolf Man, Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster (with Glenn Strange admirably standing in for Karloff), and a sultry mad scientist played by the fantastic Lenore Aubert. It begins with Lawrence Talbot (Chaney) traveling to America to stop Dracula’s plan to control the Monster, and ends with a full-on monster brawl in a gothic castle. This movie has everything: cool animated vampire to bat transformations, crackling electrodes, and even a brief cameo by Vincent Price as the Invisible Man.
It’s all the more impressive, then, that Abbott and Costello’s jokes are just as good as the monsters’ scares. Every gag here is razor sharp and perfectly timed, from Costello’s oblivious bumbling while the Wolf Man dives and claws at him, to Abbott’s steadfast refusal to accept the supernatural happenings around him. And while the usual pratfalls and punches here are funny, its the rapid-fire verbal humor that works best. “See, it’s bunk,” Abbott tells Costello, making fun of the legend written on Dracula’s coffin. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Costello replies; “That’s Dracula’s bunk!”
But as satisfying as the monsters and jokes may be, its their seamless integration by director Charles Barton that makes Meet Frankenstein one of the all-time great horror comedies. As with the other standouts in the sub-genre — movies like An American Werewolf in London, Ghostbusters, Shaun of the Dead, and Tucker and Dale vs. Evil — the humor here comes from a place of sympathy and empathy. While most horror movies feature regular people who don’t behave anything like regular people, horror comedy protagonists respond the way most of us would respond to monsters: with incredulity, annoyance, and utter terror. Horror comedy characters are pathetic and manic, making their situations all the more absurd by trying to respond rationally to the outrageous.
So when the camera holds on Lou’s sad face as he tries in vain to call for Abbott to save him from the recently risen Dracula, knowing full well that his friend won’t arrive until long after the vampire has done what it wants, we see ourselves. When Bud gets angry at Lou for talking about vampires and werewolves, we recognize our own stubborn self-confidence.
It’s this ability to bring us into the horror stories we love, to help us experience the scares in a totally unique way that make Abbott and Costello two of the most important figures in the horror pantheon.
BONUS: Abbott and Costello Meet the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
While they never got to do a full-length feature with the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Universal did arrange for the Gill Man to make a promotional appearance on the duo’s TV sketch show. The 15 minute bit consists largely of old gags, and the Creature only shows up at the end to jump out at Costello, but it’s still pretty charming.
In fact, that charm comes precisely from the fact that it’s a shoddy bit. Gags fall flat, props fail, and actors miss their marks, but none of that deters Abbott or Costello. Consummate entertainers, they both riff and play through the mishaps. The clip reminds us just how great these two were. Great enough to earn their place among classic horror icons.
