The least believable thing in this movie is that Scotland Yard would ever hire Abbott and Costello to be bobbies in some kind of pilot program testing out how well Americans do in British law enforcement. I’m not sure what the point of this program was or even how Bud and Lou (Slim and Tubby respectively) got selected for this gig, but this dopey project is just the excuse we need to get our boys overseas so that they can mix it up with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Continue reading “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953)”
Category: Comedy
The Wacky Zoo of Morgan City (1970)
You can have Dr. Seuss’s If I Ran the Zoo with its totally made up monsters, exotic lands, and that praise-craving brat Gerald McGrew. If I ran a freaking zoo, I’d do it just like Mitch Collins (Hal Holbrook) did in Wacky Zoo of Morgan City with its run down and surely dangerous and inhumane cages, toothless lion that has low blood pressure and eats oatmeal, camel who can only eat a couple of carrots at a time due to digestive issues, and penguin who demands to swim in warm water. Continue reading “The Wacky Zoo of Morgan City (1970)”
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)
By 1955 Abbott and Costello had met just about every monster Universal had to offer. The only one that had escaped their withering satire was the Mummy. Of course by the end of the Kharis films in 1944, many probably already believed that the Mummy was a joke. No matter though as Universal cranked out one last gasp in the Abbott and Costello meet the Monster of the Week oeuvre. This one looked chintzy and the gags were more rickety than ever, though the film was not without its amusing moments (almost exclusively provided by Costello). Continue reading “Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)”
The Monkey’s Uncle (1965)
Once the movie actually starts (the opening credits take long enough that we have to hear every bit of that horrible, horrible song sung by co-star Annette Funicello with the Beach Boys inexplicably backing her up) director Robert Stevenson (Jane Eyre, The Gnome-Mobile) slavishly hews to the same structure as its predecessor, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones. That means there’s not so much an actual movie going on, but rather two more installments of the Merlin Jones TV show which never existed. Of course, when you’re dealing with a gizmo that lets you learn in your sleep and a flying machine you pedal yourself, this is a good thing. Continue reading “The Monkey’s Uncle (1965)”
The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)
If this movie let me down at all, it was that there simply weren’t enough misadventures detailed, though even the filmmakers would acknowledge this and immediately respond to American’s insatiable appetite for pointless experiments involving chimps and long-suffering girlfriends by serving up a sequel, The Monkey’s Uncle, only a year later.
There isn’t a story per se going on in this one – it’s more of an episodic slice of life affair, detailing a few days in the topsy-turvy life of Merlin Jones, a guy that spends his time driving around town with a helmet containing lots of wires and electrodes on his head. Continue reading “The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)”
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a gal who writes a column for a magazine extolling the virtues of a traditional home in the country and who provides recipes and babbles about her family. The funny part (not ha-ha funny of course) is that she lives in the city, has a Hungarian chef named Felix do all the cooking, and doesn’t have a family beyond the stuffy architect suitor (John) she loathes. Her editor knows all this, but her publisher (Sydney Greenstreet) doesn’t and would fire her in a minute if he ever found out.
The movie begins with two sailors on a raft with little food. If you threw a priest and a hooker in there with them, you’d have the makings of a pretty good joke, but as it is, this is merely all set up for Liz’s big Christmas problem. Continue reading “Christmas in Connecticut (1945)”
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)
I’m sure all of you remember the very first Invisible Man sequel, The Invisible Man Returns. That movie featured a slightly prissy owner of a mine who is wrongly accused of murdering his brother. The accused has a doctor at the mine shoot him up with some invisible juice so that he can be free to roam around looking for the “real killers.” While he does this, he also has to hurry up and get it done before the drug makes him crazy. I rehash all this because Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man rehashes all this. Continue reading “Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)”