Last night’s movie event was a lot of fun! Not only was there popcorn, pizza, and cookies, we even had cartoons before the show.
The movie was “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” a classic horror-comedy monster mashup. It was a good choice for a kid-friendly pre-Halloween event; as Steve G. noted, there aren’t a lot of Halloween movies that are “soft” enough for little kids.
It was a fun event, and there are already plans to find a suitable movie for the fast-approaching Advent season.
Universal Pictures made a great deal of money from its monster movies in the 1930s. In the early ’40s, the burlesque team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello kept the studio’s coffers full. When the two franchises were combined in 1948, the result was another windfall–despite the apparent oil-and-water mix of subject matter. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was the first of these summit meetings, although the title is a misnomer. Actually, Bud and Lou bump into most of the Universal heavy-hitters, including Count Dracula (played by Béla Lugosi himself), the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.), and the Frankenstein monster (veteran monster Glenn Strange). There’s even a token appearance by the Invisible Man, whose disembodied voice is recognizable as that of Vincent Price. Sure enough, the film is funny, especially since it gives the portly Costello multiple opportunities to do his wide-eyed, quivering scaredy-cat routine. Audiences ate it up, and in future installments Bud and Lou would run into Boris Karloff, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man, and the Mummy. But the first was the best. –Robert Horton
