Is he casting a spell, or about to poke him in the eyes? Only the Invisible Man knows!
A painful example of the comedy-horror genre is Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), although perhaps Dracula or The Wolfman would have been a better addition to the title than Frankenstein. In any case, this is an attempt to meld the hijinks of the legendary Abbot and Costello with the horrific miasma emitted by Dracula and Frankenstein. The boys play deliverymen for a shipping company, but unknown to them, a minion of Dracula has designs on Costello’s brain as a replacement for Frankenstein’s current brain, and so she’s romancing Costello, much to Abbot’s bewilderment. Then he collects another lady, a shipping insurance investigator posing as … I forget.
The Wolfman, on the other hand, earnestly keeps interfering in Dracula’s plans, but finds himself in difficulty as it happens to be the full moon, leaving him decidedly ambivalent about his role in life.
Eventually, we find the boys running throughout the castle with Frankenstein and Dracula on their tail. The minion gets tossed out a window, presumably to her doom, the other is charmed by an assistant professor, so much for Costello’s love life. But the boys do survive a close call.
It did occur to me to wonder if either A&C or Lugosi & Chaney & Strange (Frankenstein’s monster) ever wished to play the other side of the title in this movie. Bela Lugosi as a comedian? It’s an intriguing thought. Untrained in movie lore, I don’t know if he actually tried. Or if just making the movies for which they were famous was a laugh riot already.
Unless comedy-horror is your academic specialty or you’re an aficionado of either set of actors, I wouldn’t waste your time on this one. The horror and the comedy are not well-integrated, and it’s not played for laughs like Young Frankenstein (1974). The cinematography is nice, as are the special effects, but the only reason I watched was because a cat insisted.
Oh, and Vincent Price addicts might want to sit through this and try to spot Vinnie, although I think you’ll fail.
