Category: 31 Days of Horror

Each October, I watch and review 31 horror movies during 31 Days of Horror Cinema at the expense of my mental well being.

31 Days of Horror Cinema

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man: 31 Days of Horror

Post author By jdp
Post date October 5, 2018
5 Comments on Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man: 31 Days of Horror

#4. Abbott and Costello Meet The Invisible Man (1951)

Nature of Shame:
It’s been a loooooong time since I last revisited the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies. I’ll try to remove my nostalgia goggles.

Hooptober Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 1950’s

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein proved to be a hit with my daughters so we carried on. I’d recently watched …Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff so the next logical stop was 1951’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, newly available on The Invisible Man Complete Legacy Blu-ray from Universal.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man Elevator Pitch

Boxer Tommy Nelson is accused of killing his manager. In order to evade the law, he takes the invisibility serum and enlists greenhorn gumshoes Bud Alexander and Lou Francis to find the real killer. (Sidenote: Alexander and Francis were Bud and Lou’s middle names.)

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man? How would they know?

Universal preceded Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man with five invisible human films between 1933 and 1944. While all existed under the Universal horror umbrella, the Invisible Man films straddled a number of widely varied genres.

The Invisible Man (1933) and The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944) are more or less nihilistic revenge films. The Invisible Man Returns (1940) skews crime-thriller, and Invisible Agent (1942), as the title suggests, takes the form of a WWII spy film. While all of the Invisible Man films include humor, The Invisible Woman (1940) plays the character for straight comedy.

This of course brings us to Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man in 1951 — a full seven years after the last of the Invisible Man series. Of all the Abbott and Costello Meet… films, this feels the least removed from the Universal series proper. Lou’s stuttering and stammering at the invisible man’s antics and Bud’s skepticism and constant attempts to capitalize on their predicament feel like natural tangents, whereas their injection into the House of Frankenstein/House of Dracula universe felt a little more clumsy.

This goes against all commonly held logic, but upon this rewatch I enjoyed Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man more than Meet Frankenstein. The running gags — especially Costello’s feud with the psychiatrist — survive extreme repetition, and the central mystery concerning the bumbling hunt for the murderer feels like a fully-baked narrative. Sure, it wanders over into a sports movie comedy for a spell while Lou fights a professional boxer with the help of the invisible Tommy Nelson. Lou gets every opportunity to display his gifts as a physical comedian.

Invisible Effects

Of course, a conversation about the Invisible Man films wouldn’t be complete without at least a mention of the wizards that created the wonderful visual effects. Even now audiences can see how these effects were indeed “special” — at the time of the Invisible Man’s release they must have blown minds. John P. Fulton, John J. Mescall and Frank D. Williams achieved the illusion of disappearing through the layering of two images — a matte process. They combined the principle photography with Claude Rains in a black suit photographed against a black velvet background.

For Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Universal used Stanley Horsely, a visual effects technician who worked with John P. Fulton on all but the original Invisible Man. Unfortunately the matte work in Abbott and Costello feels, at times, rather cheaply done compared to the earlier entries. During many scenes, the matte lines were present as was the hazy form of actor Arthur Franz. That’s not to say however that the wonder of the visual trickery has disappeared (see what I did there?) — just that it’s not as seamless and efficient.

Final Abbott and Costello Meets The Invisible Man Thoughts

Due to some nice series callbacks (Claude Rains is featured in a portrait as the creator of the formula) and more or less easy transition into the series, Abbott and Costello make the most of this monster mashup. Most anyone would tell you that the returns on this unholy pairing of the famous comedy duo and the Universal monsters dwindled with each subsequent entry. I’d like to disagree.

The biggest ding against this movie is that it doesn’t carry over thre Vincent Price Invisible Man tease from the end of Meet Frankenstein. Abbott and Costello Meets the Invisible Man maintains the fun and in some ways improves upon the slapdash pacing and narrative of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Don’t @ me. I’ve got another Abbott & Costello Meet movie to cover and I won’t be quite as friendly.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man Rating:

Availability:

Universal has given you plenty of Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man options. There’s the standalone release — which also included an HD code (bonus). It’s also included on The Invisible Man Complete Legacy Collection.

If you’d like a complete collection of the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies, that’s more difficult. There’s the brilliant (but OOP) 28-film Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection steamer trunk. The Meet the Monsters DVD set contains Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which is currently not available on Blu-ray), but is missing Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff because… I have no idea. In order to get that one, you’d need to purchase The Best of Abbott & Costello, Vol. 3 DVD. Got that?

2018 @CinemaShame / Hooptober Progress

#1. Deep Rising (1998)
#2. The Mist (2007)
#3. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
#4. Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1955)

James David Patrick is a writer. He’s written just about everything at some point or another. Add this nonsense to the list. Follow his blog at www.thirtyhertzrumble.com and find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Tags 31 days of horror, abbott and costello, abbott and costello meet frankenstein, abbott and costello meet the invisible man, hooptober, hooptober 5, the invisible man, universal horror

31 Days of Horror Cinema

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein: 31 Days of Horror

Post author By jdp
Post date October 4, 2018
11 Comments on Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein: 31 Days of Horror

#3. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Nature of Shame:
It’s been a loooooong time since I last revisited the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies. I’ll try to remove my nostalgia goggles.

Hooptober Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 1940’s
Anniversary Film

The second Universal horror wave had pretty much run its course by the end of the 1940’s — which made finding a horror film from 1948 a little trickier than I anticipated. Oddly enough I had the same problem with 1938 (because it fell between Universal horror cycles, but we’ll get back to that when I discuss The Black Doll.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Elevator Pitch

Bumbling freight handlers deliver boxes containing priceless artifacts to a wax museum only to discover the boxes contained Dracula and Frankenstein. Then the “cargo” goes missing and they’re going to need the Wolf Man to help them sort it all out. Obviously.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein? Just Frankenstein?

At the end of the 1940’s Frankenstein remained Universal’s most bankable movie monster. After 1939’s Son of Frankenstein (the last with Karloff as the Monster), the series devolved into B-movie oblivion. Universal ultimately turned to monster crossovers to breathe new life into the sagging franchise with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), followed closely by House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945).

Meanwhile, over at MGM, the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello had been experiencing their own professional difficulties. In 1943, Costello came down with rheumatic fever after a tour of U.S. army bases and six months later his infant son died when he accidentally drowned in the family swimming pool. Shortly after Costello returned from his sabbatical, a rift developed between the two when Abbott hired a domestic servant who had been fired by Costello. The duo only spoke when performing and only appeared in films as separate characters rather than as a team.

It wasn’t until 1947 when Abbott and Costello reunited properly for Buck Privates Come Home (1947). In 1948, they signed a new contract with Universal. With their careers lagging and Universal’s monster cycle running out of box office mojo, the studio crossovered their crossover and put Abbott and Costello in a monster movie.

House of Abbott & Costello

Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man — the big three monsters from the “House of” menagerie all feature prominently. Bela Lugosi reprises his role as Dracula for the first time since Browning’s 1931 film and Lon Chaney, Jr. again plays the Wolf Man. Glenn Strange lumbers around as the monster in his third feature.

Most believe that Karloff wasn’t approached about being the monster. (Or that he was and just believed the material to be rubbish — famously he agreed to promote the film for Universal as long as he didn’t have to watch it.)

Though the film boasts an ambling structure more reflective of the Abbott and Costello vignette-style of filmmaking, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein also contains a healthy stable of Universal’s well-established horror tropes. The spooky castle, mad scientist shenanigans, full-moon transformations. No monster legacies were harmed in the making of this movie.

Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein has become such a formative early horror-comedy, essential in equal measure to the Universal horror canon and Abbott and Costello’s lasting legacy. It’s therefore easy to overlook the film’s remarkable, rambling narrative. Most remember the classic scenes that open the film as Costello attempts to convey his monster sightings to a skeptical Abbott in the wax museum. Unless you’d just watched the film, however, I’m willing to bet you couldn’t say how they wind up at the “House of Dracula” during the final act.

I just watched it and I’m hazy on the details. The answer is, of course, it doesn’t really matter. The joy of the Abbott and Costello Meet… movies derive from the absurdist vignettes that somehow shoehorn the comedy duo into situations with the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, the Wolf Man and eventually Boris Karloff, the Invisible Man and the Mummy.

The Nostalgic Things that Go Bump

I watched most every Universal horror movie over the course of about two Halloweens, circa age 8 or 9. AMC; back when it was a no-commercial, all movie channel like TCM; showed all of these movies. I diligently recorded each and every one onto SLP VHS tapes. And despite my sincere love for some and nostalgic devotion to others, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein has always held the greatest power to immediately revive the sense of discovery associated with those horror movie marathons.

Of course, you’ll always have those naysayers who’ll complain that Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein is just another Abbott and Costello vehicle and that it has no place in the legitimate Universal horror cycle and blah blah blahbity blah.

Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein is, if nothing else, reverent to the monsters themselves. The stories that had come before boasted very loose or nonexistent logical continuity and Abbot and Costello’s outing does nothing to tarnish the previously established universe where Dracula/Frankenstein/The Wolf Man all occupy the same time and space. In many ways, Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein provides a *more* satisfying conclusion to that story.

Final Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Thoughts

During this viewing I started to pay more attention to the connective tissue. How Abbott and Costello “fit” into Universal horror. Narratively, Bud Abbott wasn’t wrong about his daughter being capable of writing a better script, but a script could never truly reflect what works about the film. Personality and novelty. You can script the relationship between Abbott and Costello any more than you can dictate the emotional attachment to Bela Lugosi or Lon Chaney, Jr. in their monster makeup. These things just are, and neither time nor tide can erode their unlikely place in cinema history.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Rating:

Availability:

Universal has given you dozens of opportunities to own Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein on Blu-ray and DVD. There’s the standalone release — which also included an HD code (bonus). It’s also included on The Frankenstein Complete Legacy Collection, The Dracula Complete Legacy Collection and The Wolf Man Complete Legacy Collection.

2018 @CinemaShame / Hooptober Progress

#1. Deep Rising (1998)
#2. The Mist (2007)
#3. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

James David Patrick is a writer. He’s written just about everything at some point or another. Add Deep Rising to that list. Follow his blog at www.thirtyhertzrumble.com and find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Tags 31 days of horror, abbott and costello, abbott and costello meet frankenstein, abbott and costello meet the monsters, dracula, hooptober, hooptober 5, the wolf man, universal horror

31 Days of Horror Cinema

The Mist: 31 Days of Horror

Post author By jdp
Post date October 2, 2018
15 Comments on The Mist: 31 Days of Horror

#2. The Mist (2007)

Nature of Shame:
Unseen Frank Darabont / Stephen King collaboration that King believed bested his own source material.

Hooptober Challenge Checklist:
Decade: 2000’s
Flying Things Will Kill You

Tapping another entry in my Netflix queue for this second Hooptober entry. I fast-tracked some horror titles to jumpstart the horror movie proceedings. I took this next statement right off an SAT test.

Frankenstein : Lightning bolt :: Hooptober : Netflix queue

The Mist had never been high on my Watchlist despite warm buzz — something that speaks to the fact that there’s a heap of movies to watch and only so many hours in the day. The likeliest explanation? Computer-generated curmudgeonry. I’m the old fart on my porch yelling at all the computer generated children to get off my lawn.

The other ding against The Mist‘s appeal was that I’d knew all about the supposedly great ending. (I only say “supposedly” because I’d yet to see it — I’m only now about to cast judgment.) I must have osmosed it via movie talk. Now that I’d committed to watching The Mist to help fulfill the “Flying Things Will Kill You” requirement this Hooptober, however, I thought about the potential to once again test my “No Such Thing as a Spoiler” Theory.

Ahem.

I believe — with few exceptions — that a truly great movie will stand on its own, no matter how much you know about it. Like how I eye-roll so hard it hurts every time someone tells me that they don’t want to watch Citizen Kane because they know the ending. Like Rosebud is the whole point of Citizen Kane and there’s nothing else interesting about the entire movie. ARRGGHHH. If you want to know more about my thoughts on Citizen Kane, I’ve got an entire podcast to which you can listen.

It’s the different between The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Others (2001). And now I’ll commence a 12,000 word side-by-side analysis of the twist finales of both these films to prove conclusively my theory that one is great and one is nonsense.

Or I’ll just carry on with a few hundred words about The Mist and let us all get on with our lives.

The Mist Elevator Pitch

New England locals become trapped in a local supermarket when a mysterious fog rolls through town dealing uncertain death in the form of Lovecraftian beasties. While the innocents endure the siege, the community splinters into warring factions as the citizens come to terms with whatever lurks out there in… the mist.

Did you say… the Mist?

I did, and there’s lots of it. It’s not the creatures in the mist that make The Mist a movie to watch. You’d think that the mist would be the main attraction in The Mist, but you’d be wrong about the mist. Though I have to admit that the creatures take on fascinating and unexpected forms… in the mist.

(I hear that repeating a page’s keyword works wonders for online search rankings. So let’s all try adding “…in the mist” to the end of every sentence to see if it works as well as “…in bed.”)

Unfortunately the creature effects are once again a mixed bag of CGI and practical effects techniques. Considering, however, that the film boasted only an $18million dollar budget I’m prepared to give them a passing grae — especially considering that Darabont, inspired by The Night of the Living Dead and pre-color Harryhausen (who clearly inspired aspects of this production), had intended to release the film in black and white. MGM balked at a wide release for a mainstream black and white horror movie (GOD FORBID). Meanwhile, Darabont still prefers the black and white version of The Mist.

I watched the color version only. I’m sorry to say I’ll be unable to weigh in properly on this debate. I’m sure, however, that the creature effects would have worked so much better in black and white and that color only calls attention to their binary birth canal… in the mist.

Speaking of the “Flying Things Will Kill You” theme of this particular Hooptober.

Society Deconstructed

As I suggested a moment ago, you’ll enjoy the horror elements inherent to a movie about unseen monsters picking off innocents trapped in a supermarket. The monsters come in tentacled, winged and gargantuan varieties. You’ll remember The Mist not because of the monsters but because of the horror of a Marcia Gay Harden scorned.

As the townspeople (Thomas Jane, Toby Jones, William Sadler, Andre Braugher, etc.) face the uncertain haze lingering outside the supermarket, they’re faced with a series of conundrums. At first they must choose whether or not to believe in the danger lurking outside. Some people said things, but those people seemed certifiably bananas, so… As more and more people wind up dead, the survivors are forced to reconcile their reality versus what’s actually in the mist. Characters come to represent the varied means by which individuals approach the unexplained.

Some choose to take the mist and the monsters at face value. It’s a test of survival. This is an unprecedented problem; but still we must find a solution. Others respond with fervent denial. Logic and reason state that none of this can be happening. And then there are those that derived a very peculiar lesson from the book of Job.

Christian zealot, Mrs Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), interprets the mist and the monsters as the wrath of God. When more and more people become paralyzed with fear after having witnessed events that cannot be understood by the human experience, her legions grow in size and fervor. Anyone who dares confront the mist further tempts the wrath of God. They must be stopped otherwise God will further unleash his judgment upon all of us.

Marcia Gay Harden takes it upon herself to consume all of that supermarket scenery. She delivers an over-the-top performance to make Nicolas Cage blush and put any belligerent televangelist to shame. Too much? Hardly. By the time she’s screaming at her faithful to do away with the sinners amongst them, she’s become so full of her own power and conviction that anything less would fail to convey the seething hate and monstrous rage befitting a character symbolic of the world’s wrongheaded religious zealotry.

The Monster of The Mist

While The Mist presents a traditional war between a small band of survivors and the uncertain monstrous outside, the real threat to survival remains the monster inside all of us. The human tendency to destroy as it is brought out by fear and anger and thirty-foot tentacles devouring a stock boy through the bay doors.

Fear and our reaction to fear can become our greatest strength (courage under unimaginable circumstances), but also represent our greatest human weaknesses.

The Mist lays down a scathing indictment of the worst tendencies of human nature and organized religion cloaked in atmosphere and mystery. Ultimately the mystery behind the mist never becomes clear. Some viewers might find that lack of closure off-putting because there’s a substantial side-plot that concerns who or what caused the mist.

The characters want to know because they want someone to blame. The notion of “fault” or “blame” becomes a central preoccupation. They want to deal with the crisis by punishing those at fault, but that doesn’t ever matter to the narrative itself. Punishment does not cause the mist to recede nor does it improve their current situation. The Mist offers this darkest side of human nature as the real monster of the film.

Final The Mist Thoughts

You’ll notice I didn’t specifically mention the ending. True. While I don’t believe Spoilers! would tarnish your experience, I do believe that a comprehensive discussion about the ending would direct your reading. So watch first, and then we’ll discuss.

Frank Darabont had first tried to make a movie out of The Mist as his directorial debut. He instead went ahead with The Shawshank Redemption. His interest in the project dates back to the 1980s. It’s easy to see why Darabont felt so passionately about The Mist, a story he considered a throwback to Paddy Chayefsky and Shakespeare. It’s every bit as accomplished as The Shawshank Redemption. Only the latter film raises your spirit while the former tosses it into a blender and sets the machine to devastate.

The Mist Rating:

Availability:

Alliance released a two-disc Collector’s Edition of The Mist back in 2008 that contains both the color and black and white versions of the film.

Buy The Mist on Blu-ray from Amazon.

2018 @CinemaShame / Hooptober Progress

#1. Deep Rising (1998)
#2. The Mist (2007)

Disclaimer: I earn rewards from DVD.Netflix.com, which has thousands of movies to choose from, many that you won’t find on streaming services. I do this because the availability of physical media is important. The popular streaming notion of “everything available all the time” is a myth. We are always our own best curators. #PhysicalMedia #DVDNation #ad

Tags 31 days of horror, frank darabont, frank darabont the mist, hooptober, stephen king the mist, the mist, the mist 2007, the shawshank redemption