Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein

Plot synopsis:
Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) makes an urgent phone call from London to a Florida railway station where Chick Young (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello) work as baggage clerks. Talbot tries to impart to Wilbur the danger of a shipment due to arrive for "McDougal's House Of Horrors", a local wax museum. The crates purportedly contain the remains of Count Dracula (Béla Lugosi) and the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange). However, before Wilbur can understand, a full moon rises and Talbot transforms into a werewolf. He proceeds to destroy his hotel room while Wilbur is on the line. Wilbur thinks the call is a prank and hangs up. Meanwhile, the museum owner, McDougal (Frank Ferguson), has arrived to claim the shipments. When Wilbur badly mishandles the crates, McDougal demands that the boys deliver them to his museum so his insurance agent can inspect them.
Chick and Wilbur deliver the crates after hours. They open the first one and find Dracula's coffin. When Chick leaves the room to retrieve the second crate, Wilbur reads aloud the Dracula legend printed on an exhibit card. The coffin slowly creaks open. Wilbur is so frightened that his attempts to call Chick result in helpless sputtering. Before Chick returns with the second crate, Dracula climbs unnoticed out of his coffin and hides in the shadows. Wilbur claims that the coffin opened, but Chick shows him that it is in fact empty. While the boys open the second crate containing the Monster, Chick leaves the room to greet McDougal and the insurance agent. Dracula now hypnotizes Wilbur and re-animates the Monster. They both leave, and by the time McDougal, the insurance agent, and Chick enter, both crates are empty. McDougal accuses the boys of theft and has them arrested.
That night, Dr. Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert) welcomes Dracula and the Monster to her island castle. Sandra, a gifted surgeon who has studied Dr. Frankenstein's notebooks, has seduced Wilbur as part of Dracula's plan to replace the Monster's brutish brain with a more pliable one--Wilbur's.
Wilbur and Chick are bailed out of jail. They assume that Sandra posted bond, but Joan Raymond (Jane Randolph), an undercover investigator for the insurance company, did so. Joan also feigns love for Wilbur, hoping he will lead her to the missing "exhibits." Wilbur invites Joan to a masquerade ball that evening. Meanwhile, Lawrence Talbot has tracked Dracula and the Monster from Europe and has taken the apartment across the hall from Wilbur and Chick. Talbot asks Chick and Wilbur to help him find and destroy Dracula and the Monster. Wilbur believes, but Chick remains skeptical.
That night Wilbur, Chick and Joan go to Sandra's castle to pick her up for the ball. Wilbur answers a telephone call from Talbot, who informs them that they are in fact in the "House of Dracula". Wilbur reluctantly agrees to search the castle with Chick, and soon stumbles upon a basement staircase that leads to a boat and dock. Chick insists they search for Dracula and the Monster to prove to Wilbur that they do not really exist. Behind a revolving door, Wilbur experiences a few close calls with the monsters; whenever he tries to get Chick's attention, the monsters have disappeared. Meanwhile, Joan discovers Dr. Frankenstein's notebook in Sandra's desk, and Sandra finds Joan's insurance company employee ID in her purse.
As the men and women prepare to leave for the ball, a suavely dressed Dr. Lejos (a.k.a. Dracula) introduces himself to Joan and the boys. Also working at the castle is the naive Prof. Stevens (Charles Bradstreet), who questions some of the specialized equipment that has arrived. After Wilbur admits that he was in the basement, Sandra feigns a headache and tells Wilbur and the others that they will have to go to the ball without her. In private, Sandra admits to Dracula that Stevens's suspicions, Joan's credentials, and Wilbur's snooping in the basement have made her nervous enough to put the experiment on hold. Dracula asserts his will by hypnotizing her and biting her in the neck. (In a continuity error, Dracula's reflection is visible in a mirror. Vampires do not have a reflection, as stated in "Dracula" (1931).)
Everyone is now at the masquerade ball. Talbot arrives and confronts Dr. Lejos, who is in costume as Dracula. Lejos easily deflects Talbot's accusations and takes Joan to the dance floor. Sandra lures Wilbur to a quiet spot in the woods and attempts to bite him, but Chick and Larry approach and she flees. While Talbot, Chick and Wilbur search for Joan, Talbot transforms into the Wolf Man and stalks Wilbur. Wilbur escapes, but the Wolf Man attacks McDougal, who is also at the ball. Since Chick's costume includes a wolf mask, McDougal accuses Chick of attacking him out of revenge. Chick escapes, and witnesses Dracula hypnotizing Wilbur. Chick is also hypnotized and rendered helpless while Dracula and Sandra bring Wilbur and Joan back to the castle. The next morning, Chick and Talbot, both fugitives, meet up in the bayou. Talbot confesses to Chick that he is indeed the Wolf Man. Chick explains that Dracula has taken Wilbur and Joan to the island, and they agree to work together to rescue them.
Wilbur is held in a pillory in the cellar. Sandra explains her plan to transplant his brain into the Monster. When she and Dracula leave him to prepare the Monster for the operation, Chick and Talbot sneak in set Wilbur and Stevens free. Dracula and Sandra return to the cellar and find Wilbur missing; Dracula easily recalls Wilbur, and he soon finds himself strapped to an operating table in the lab. The Monster is on an adjacent table, receiving electric shocks. As Sandra brings a scalpel to Wilbur's forehead, Talbot and Chick burst in. Talbot pulls Sandra away from Wilbur, and Chick unintentionally knocks her out while fending off Dracula with a chair. Chick flees the lab pursued by Dracula. Talbot is about to untie Wilbur when he once again transforms into the Wolf Man. Dracula returns to the lab and engages in a brief tug of war with the Wolf Man over Wilbur's gurney. Dracula flees and the Wolf Man gives chase. Chick returns to untie Wilbur just as the Monster, now at full power, breaks his restraints and climbs off his gurney. Sandra attempts to command him, but the Monster picks her up and tosses her out the lab window to her death. Chick and Wilbur escape the lab and run from room to room with the Monster following them.
Dracula, while fighting with the Wolf Man, attempts to escape by transforming into a bat. The Wolf Man leaps, catches the bat, and tumbles off a balcony onto the rocks below. Presumably, both are killed. Joan abruptly wakes from her trance, and is rescued by Stevens. The boys run out of the castle to the pier, with the Monster still in pursuit. They climb into a small row boat while Stevens and Joan arrive and set the pier ablaze. The Monster wheels around into the flames, succumbing as the pier collapses into the water.
Wilbur scolds Chick for not believing him. Chick insists that now that all the monsters are dead, "there's nobody to scare us anymore." They suddenly hear a disembodied voice (provided by an uncredited Vincent Price) and see a cigarette floating in the air. The voice says, "Oh, that's too bad. I was hoping to get in on the excitement. Allow me to introduce myself--I'm the Invisible Man!" The boys jump out of the boat and swim away while the Invisible Man laughs.

Tags: gothic, murder

Review:
This is probably the best horror comedy ever made.While it doesn't make fun of the monsters it does have some fun with them.Just love the Frankenstein monster's initial reaction to Lou Costello.Lugosi truly shows how wrong Universal was to treat him so badly over the years.He gives a wonderful perfomance with nice comedic touches.Chaney is excellent in "his baby" the Wolf Man.Strange is given a bit more to do as the monster rather than just lie around until the last five minutes.Great fun for everybody!.
The alternative view, which I hold, is that this movie is a classic comedy-horror, perhaps the best example of that hybrid sub-genre until John Landis' 'An American Werewolf In London' emerged in 1981.'A&CMF' warrants classic status because it is probably the best Universal horror film since 'The Wolf Man' (1941); certainly it has a much stronger narrative thread, not to mention a better reason for the three monsters coming together, than either 'House Of Frankenstein'(1944) or 'House Of Dracula'(1945).
'Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein', by having The Wolf Man pursuing Dracula and the Monster, and also having Dracula plan to put Lou Costello's brain into the Frankenstein Monster (with the help of the duplicitous Dr. Mornay) provides an extremely satisfactory reason for the various characters coming together.As for the acting, it has often been pointed out that this film works because the monster actors (Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr & Glenn Strange) play it straight, and this is very true, with Chaney's tortured soul act contrasting well with Lou Costello's one-liners (especially the famous 'you and twenty million other guys' joke).
Now it's up to Bud Abbott and Lon Chaney Jr. to save Lou and stop Dracula before Lou literally loses his mind!This is my absolute favorite Abbott & Costello film, sweet and witty but also dark and spooky, with plenty of nice, Gothic sets filled with full moons, flapping bats, cobwebs and lab equipment.
Lon Chaney Jr. as the lycanthropic Lawrence Talbot, Bela Lugosi in his final appearance as Dracula and Glenn Strange as the Monster all play their roles perfectly straight as Bud and Lou stumble around them.
It looks good enough, though it seems whatever Lon Chaney may have gained in comfort from Bud's less time-consuming makeup, he had to trade-off any facial mobility as his face looks fixed in the same expression throughout the film.Bud and Lou's misadventures unloading McDougal's crates is a great mix of laughs & chills where we get to see a variation of the "moving candle" bit, Dracula reviving the monster, and for the first time in any Universal picture the camera doesn't move or cut away as the vampire exits from his coffin.
And Glenn Strange, looking rather gruesome in Westmore's best makeup work, seems creakier than ever before as the monster.I have to mention one of my personal favorite Bud/Lou moments when they make their first trip to the island with Joan Raymond: Lou tells Bud in reference to Joan "she's mine too" then proceeds to dab his mouth with Bud's necktie.While the mere presence of Abbott and Costello in this picture may turn the stomachs of many "horror purists", it's obvious that great care was taken by the filmmakers not to ridicule the monsters.
Not only that, we get two of the original actors who actually played those roles: Lon Chaney (wolf man) and Bela Lugosi (Dracula).The special-effects are terrible but, hey, the film is close to 60 years old.
It's also nice to think, with all the personal sadness and cinematic dreck he was forced to go through, that Bela Lugosi managed to bat 1.000 in playing his greatest role, as he only played the Count in two film classics, this and "Dracula."Playing the monsters straight probably was the best idea the filmmakers had, but there's other good stuff here.
It's really funny and dramatic, drawing on the best of the old Monster actors (Lon Chaney Jr. in particular, but Bela Lugosi, too), and on the truly comic genius of Bud Abbott (the short one).
This move is the funniest move I have ever seen and the second best Universal Monster Movie(second only to Frankenstein.)The movie stars the comedic pair as baggage carriers and come across the body of Frankenstein(Glenn Strange) and the remains of Dracula( Bela Lugosi in his final part for a major studio.) They delver it to McDougal's House of Horrors where the two come to life and Dracula teams up with Costello's girlfriend Sandra(Lenore Aubert) to replace the monster's brain with Costello's!
Universal Studio's three most popular classic monsters (Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf Man, and Count Dracula) are brought together one final time in a fitting swan song tribute where they're treated with more respect and are better woven together into the plot than they had been in either one of their last two serious vehicles, "House of Frankenstein (1944)" and "House of Dracula (1945)".Bud and Lou are two comical baggage clerks working in Florida who deliver two crates to a local Chamber of Horrors attraction.
Unable to convince his cynical partner Abbott of the strange goings-on, Costello gains an ally when Lawrence Talbot the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney) arrives on the scene to inform the comic duo he's hot on the trail of the monsters and that Dracula intends to restore Frankenstein's creation to full power.
Which is why, sometimes, you can't do any better than romp around with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and their meeting with Frankenstein (and friends) is arguably the most purely joyful escapist fun any of their monster mashes have to offer.
Bela Lugosi (amazingly, in his only time reprising Count Dracula!) is as good as they come, slinking around with eerie-eyed menace undercut by a hefty undercurrent of silky charm, Glenn Strange makes for a fantastically gruesome, shambling Frankenstein's monster, while Lon Chaney Jr.'s wooden melancholic delivery as the world-weary Lawrence Talbot wins almost as many laughs as the headliners, just as his snarling, contorting Wolf Man is as fearsome as ever.
Dracula's castle also makes for a sumptuously Gothic set piece, and its labyrinth of secret swivelling wall panels, cobblestones and stockades makes for the perfect playpen for Bud and Lou. You pretty much get what it says on the tin with Abbott and Costello - and Meets Frankenstein, by privileging big recurring gags over zingers, isn't even their sharpest work in their oeuvre - so those aspiring for smarter or more substantial screwball frivolity would do best to bolt for the door (ideally screeching "CHIIIIIIIIIIICKKKKKK!!!" like Costello).
This is another awesome bud Abbott and Lou Costello film and because of all the same reasons it has awesome comedy in it it has an awesome story line to it the acting is good in it the actors in it are good and also all the classic villains are back in it Bela Lugosi once again does a great Dracula, Glenn strange once again does a great Frankenstein's monster, and Lon Chaney Jr. once again does a great wolf man.
It took the British Hammer Film Studio to revive the genre in the Fifties with some more up to date special effects.Bud and Lou are a couple of delivery men, working for what I guess was UPS at the time and they lose a couple of crates consigned to Frank Ferguson's Amusement house of horrors.
Fun Universal monster mash movie, with some classic horror characters and actors and of course Bud Abbott and Lou Costello..
All the ingredients to make this is a good and fun movie are already pleasant; the two comical actors Bud Abbott and Lou Costello and the classic horror movie stars Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and Glenn Strange.
This in many ways is the best vehicle every developed for Bud & Lou. They got a great cast to work with with all the major monster actors from the Frankenstein/Wolfman/Dracula films.
Glenn Strange as the Monster has more screen time in this film than the Houses of Frankenstein and Dracula combined and his portrayal has to be the most brutish and inhuman of those performed by the various actors who took on the role at Universal.
Luckily for them, the Wolf Man Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) shows up to help stop Dracula.This one has just about everything you could want if you are a fan of Abbott and Costello or the classic Universal horror films.
Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr. as Wolf Man made a number of straight sci-fi horror films before this time.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) **** (out of 4) One of the all-time greats has Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) asking Wilbur (Lou Costello) to help him destroy Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange) but Chick (Bud Abbott) tries to convince him that there's not such a thing as monsters.If you read the production history of this film and how it came to be, you have to think it was a miracle that it turned out so well.
Lenore Aubert, Jane Randolph and Frank Ferguson are also very good in their supporting parts.ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN takes two classics, the comedians and the monsters, blends them together and somehow it works.
Bud & Lou mix genres perfectly with Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr., and Glenn Strange in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
I started it by watching one classic team-Laurel & Hardy-in The Live Ghost and ended it with another-Abbott & Costello-in which they meet Frankenstein (the monster) along with Dracula and the Wolf Man. Seven years after penning their haunted house comedy Hold That Ghost, Robert Lees & Frederic I.
Then we have Dracula, Wolf Man and Frankenstein Monster in one film and they are very well treated here and a joy to watch(the characters also featured in House of Dracula but it's nowhere near as good a film and Meet Frankenstein uses them far better).Bela Lugosi is suave, imposing and aristocratically evil as Dracula(like Dracula should have and traits that Lugosi nailed in a way few other actors portraying Dracula did) but also has a ball with the comedy.
Abbott & Costello play two freight handlers named Chick Young & Wilbur Grey, who get mixed up with McDougall's House Of Horrors, which has recently gained possession of Dracula(Bela Lugosi) & Frankenstein(played by Glenn Strange) The Wolf Man(Lon Chaney Jr.) is close behind, as he warns the boys of the threat, but is too late, since Dracula revives the monster and plans to give him a new brain with the help of lady scientist Sandra Mornay(played by Lenore Aubert) who has selected Wilbur as the best candidate.
Of those 36 pictures I have now seen over half of them and nowhere in any of those other films does the comical rapport work as well as it does here in "Frankenstein".The script, the characters, the comedy, the horror, and all of the other essential elements that make for memorable filmmaking, all come together so wonderfully well (as a near-perfect whole) here in "Frankenstein".Abbott & Costello play characters Chick Young and Wilbur Grey (respectively), a pair of bumbling freight handlers at a Florida railway station.When Chick and Wilbur are given the task of delivering 2 casket-sized crates to McDougal's House of Horrors museum that's when all hell breaks loose as our bewildered boys are not only confronted by Dracula and the Frankestein monster, but, by the Werewolf, as well.And, at this point, boy, do things get wild and crazy for Chick and Wilbur.This movie is really a whole lot of good fun.
This film takes the classic Universal Movie Monsters, already reduced to so much camp in the awful mash-up sequels (Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, House of Pancakes.) I give Lugosi and Chaney credit for playing their characters straight.
They are so frightened when they see Frankenstein's Monster that they run and collide with each other; their bones fly in all directions and form the movie's actual title: BUD ABBOTT LOU COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.Of course Frankenstein means his monstrous creation, not the scientist himself.
One of the great horror comedies of all time, this monster mash-up proves to be tremendous fun.Legendary comedy team Abbott and Costello play baggage handlers Chick and Wilbur (respectively), who come into possession of crates containing Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Frankenstein Monster (Glenn Strange) that are intended to go to a house of horrors.
The title of the film is misleading, since it really is 'Abbott and Costello Meet Dracula.' Fortunately for us, the Frankenstein monster is not the main attraction, but rather it's Bela Lugosi instead who is given a major role as he seeks to revive it by transplanting Lou's brain into the monster's body.
A&C keep the laughs coming at a rat-a-tat speed (with variations of some of their classic routines), while Lon Chaney as the Wolfman, Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, and Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster (subbing for Boris Karloff, who had vacated the damaging typecast) provide the necessary shudders and goose bumps, wisely playing it serious as the stalking creatures.
It was innovative in its day for poking fun at Universal's established movie monsters (whose movie careers, like that of the comedy duo, had declined considerably over the previous five years), something that had never been done before but, apart from a couple of one-liners ("You and 20 million other guys," says Lou after wolfman Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) explains how he turns into a wolf every night when the moon is full), the quality of the gags is nothing special.
Too much time is spent on Lou pulling those faces of his, and then trying to convince Bud that he isn't imagining all the spooks that mysteriously disappear when the straight man finally appears on the scene.The storyline has Bud and Lou playing a couple of railway baggage attendants who are instructed to deliver a couple of crates which contain Dracula (Bela Lugosi  who got the role when the producers discovered he wasn't dead after all) and Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange).
The story is muddled and revolves around a reincarnated Dracula attempting to revive the Frankenstein Monster; he's opposed by the Wolfman and Abbott and Costello, who bumble their way through much of the proceedings.The comedy is definitely the most dated aspect of the movie, and to a modern audience much of the humour seems laboured or obvious.
i must've seen this movie maybe 60 times,as a kid in jersey they used to run this on TV all the time.Abbott and Costello star as shipping clerks who get tangled up with count Dracula(Bela Lugosi)Frankenstein monster(Glenn strange)the wolfman(Lon Chaney Jr)and a femme fatale(Lenore Aubert)its played for laughs,of course.Boris Karloff was originally approached to play Frankensteins monster but refused because he did'nt want to see Frankensteins monster mocked and played for laughs.this was made in 1948 towards the end of the monster cycle.
its a hilarious spoof of the universal monster movies it must be seen to be appreciated.Abbott and Costello also met up with the mummy,Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the invisible man in later films.10 out of 10..
horror/comedy isn't exactly a highly respected genre, although there have been several classics in it since (Young Frankenstein, An American Werewolf in London, etc).The story starts when a couple of crates arrive in the US, to an office manned by Chick Young (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello).
But it turns out they have bigger worries -- Dracula has chosen Wilbur's brain to transplant into the Frankenstein monster in order to revive him ...Since the Universal horror franchise had stopped taking itself seriously several years previously, it made sense that the final movie should just go the whole hog and be a comedy.
I don't think it would really scare anyone over 10 years old, so it is a great one to watch as a family.Bela Lugosi is fantastic, as is Lon Chaney Jr. They hold the monster story line together and make it work as a continuation of the universal monster film series, with a comedic twist.
Baggage handlers Chick (Bud Abbott) and Wilbur (Lou Costello) are instructed to deliver and unpack two crates containing the coffin of Count Dracula and the body of Frankenstein's monster, which are destined to be attractions at a museum of horrors.
Then there's the little matter of it's trio of classic monsters—but while it's nice to see Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange), Dracula (Bela Lugosi) and the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) together again, this silly caper simply doesn't do them justice, the creatures proving so inept that they can't even catch a bumbling buffoon like Lou Costello.
Dracula (Bela Lugosi) wants to transfer the brain of Wilbur (Lou Costello) into Frankenstein (Glenn Strange) but Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney), is out to stop him.This isn't as bad as the title suggests.
Not only Glenn Strange's Frankenstein Monster, but also Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula and Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Wolf Man play a joint Margaret Dumont to the frowns and scowls of Bud and Lou. Regardless, the script is practically out to lunch, plotting an obligatory amount of time in which one must endure the compulsory formula strains.
Abbott and Costello meet the original Dracula - Bela Lugosi and the original Wolfman - Lon Chaney Jnr. Glen Strange plays Frankenstein's monster faithfully and Vincent Price makes a brief addition to the film as the voice of the Invisible Man. The film has one other gimmick and that is a female mad doctor.
The comedy / horror film known as Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein will never be considered an old movie.
This is a cool movie, with Bud and Lou as freight handlers who get mixed up in Dracula's (Bela Lugosi) scheme to give Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange) a new brain, while the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) tries to stop him.