Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Movie Review

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a 1948 horror comedy film directed by Charles Barton and starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. It is a very good comedy flick.

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“I saw what I saw when I saw it!“

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The film basically follows this duo as they encounter Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man. What I liked about it is that it is genuinely funny at times and the humor is mostly very satisfying leading to a successful genre film. And although the story is definitely familiar, it is still pretty solid for this type of film.

Abbott and Costello are absolutely fantastic here. This is my first introduction to their work and I have to say that I really liked both of them. Abbott is a great straight man and he wonderfully fulfils that role. But of course this is Costello’s vehicle and he is absolutely terrific. He is not only very charismatic, but also evidently funny and so incredibly likable. Bela Lugosi is really good and at times even great in the role of Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr. isn’t as great as he was in ‘The Wolf Man‘, but he’s still a welcome addition and Frankenstein’s monster is the least memorable of the villains mostly because Boris Karloff did not reprise his role from ‘Frankenstein’ and because the monster just wasn’t emphasized nearly as enough as he should have been.

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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is very well directed and edited while also having pretty good cinematography and some really fun special effects. The effects of Dracula transforming into a bat were pretty neat and visually intriguing. The acting is great as I said before and the film is genuinely atmospheric at times. That is both the film’s weakness and strength. It is definitely eerie at times and it utilizes its imagery and its monsters surprisingly well, but the problem is that it sometimes sacrifices genuine horror for laughs and the mix of horror and comedy isn’t that well established in this particular case.

The movie is immensely entertaining, at least it was for me. Its slight running time flew by and I had a great, amusing time watching at and I laughed most of the time or at least smiled. I have to say that it caught me by surprise how good it was as I did not expect that. The highlights for me were the extended sequence at the beginning where Lou was continually scared and that whole basement sequence was perfectly executed and a lot of fun.

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So the movie is fun, it serves its purpose as a comedy and it flies by. However, it isn’t great as the plot is too simplistic, some characters do not work as much as the others do and the whole third act I really didn’t like. The action at the end was so typical, so uninspired and the movie just became pretty tired at that point whereas it was very energetic before. But the ending itself saved it as ‘The Invisible Man’ was hinted and that was just a lot of fun and done in the most entertaining manner possible. Overall, the film is very good, but not as great as it could have been.