Given that I’ve watched pretty much all the main Universal Monsters films before now, it seemed like the time was finally upon me to finish them off (I know the Gill-man was still to come, but because he only came about a few years later I don’t really consider him and his adventures part of the main series)… much like Universal itself had finally decided to, after a few years of “monster rally” films, they decided to pair Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and Glenn Strange with the ultimate monsters, i.e. their flagging comedy duo Abbott and Costello… By this point, the studio was now Universal-International and the new management was trying to build the studio’s prestige again by killing off their B-films and serials and horror, but they were also near bankruptcy, so despite all that William Goetz agreed to the combination of horror and comedy in case it worked… which, indeed, it did, being quite a hit and reviving A&C’s failing fortunes. I’m not sure how well it worked for me, though… I’m less sniffy about it than Wm. Everson seems to have been, but equally I wasn’t as enthusiastic about it as a lot of critics are; per the film’s Wiki entry, one contemporary critic claimed you really needed to be an A&C fan to enjoy the thing, and perhaps they were right. My own prior acquaintance with them is limited entirely to the A&C cartoon show, and I haven’t seen that since I were a little ‘un in the early 80s; I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any of their actual films until now, and I found something kind of grating about Abbott in particular here… and yet the film is as well made as it probably could’ve been, given how relatively cheap it was (some really good sets in the film) and how neither A&C were happy about having to do the film at all; the monsters are actually played pretty straight (Chaney is the best in show), and though the mix of comedy and horror is kind of ungainly, the actual horror business in the film is pretty well done (Chaney’s transformations are particularly good). Accordingly, even if not everything works, I think I’ll still give the film a thumbs up more than otherwise.
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