Why I Love ‘Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein’
By: Brian Rowe
Tags: Comedy, Movies, Horror, Film, Classics

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Universal monsters, once terrifying creatures of the night (and sometimes day), must’ve been the butt of all jokes by the end of the 1940s, because here’s a comedy that pokes fun at Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein’s monster. The reason that these characters would appear in a slapstick comedy like this is that all other uses for the creations had pretty much been played out by this point.

Audiences loved Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster in the ‘30s because they were new and fresh, and they were given worthwhile stories. By the mid 1940s, however, audiences had grown tired of them, with sequel after sequel after sequel. Ghost of Frankenstein, Son of Dracula, and the Houses of Both Those Guys didn’t help matters much.

By 1948, a movie like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein wasn’t only welcome, it was necessary. Let’s take a popular comedic duo from the day and pair them with these classic monsters. What would happen? The comedic possibilities are endless.

The film has a fairly fun storyline. Bud and Lou work for a shipping company and get tangled up with the creepy kooky creatures when they deliver crates containing Dracula and the Frankenstein monster to MacDougal’s House of Horror. Of course neither of these monsters is truly laid to rest, this all being an elaborate plot to revive them. The Wolf Man is also on hand to try to halt the horrific proceedings.

I’m not really that familiar with Abbott and Costello as I am with the ultimate classic comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy. It all goes back to my dad. He could’ve easily let me grow up with all the Abbott & Costello films or the Three Stooges films or the Marx Brothers films.

I discovered a little bit of these guys later in my teen years, but it was Laurel & Hardy that I fell in love with at an early age. I’ve always been partial to these guys and for the most part I’ve stayed away from other comedy teams of the period. While I enjoyed this film, I just didn’t love Abbott and Costello. If it had been Laurel and Hardy, I would’ve been even more enthusiastic about it.

My primary joy in watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was seeing the three monsters in the same movie together. Except for their appearances together in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, I can’t think of another film where we see Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man all together. And this one’s a lot better than those House films.

The most joy definitely comes from seeing Bela Lugosi play Dracula again, which, to my knowledge, is the only other time outside of the original 1931 Dracula film that Lugosi played the Dracula character. It would’ve been even more extraordinary, obviously, if the filmmakers had gotten Boris Karloff, but that maybe would’ve been too much to ask for.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is loads of fun, and well worth watching for horror buffs and comedy buffs alike.

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Brian Rowe is an author, teacher, book devotee, and film fanatic. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He writes young adult and middle grade suspense novels, and is represented by Kortney Price of the Corvisiero Agency. You can read more of his work at his website, brianrowebooks.com.