Product Details

• Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange
• Directors: Charles Barton
• Writers: Bram Stoker, Frederic I. Rinaldo, John Grant, Mary Shelley, Robert Lees
• Producers: Robert Arthur
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: March 1, 1992
• Run Time: 83 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (166 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300181820
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,706 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

170 of 174 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Little family gratitude for all your kind reviews, May 28, 2004

By 

Richard Lees "rl" (Altadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (DVD)

Hello All
I was just wandering through amazon and came upon this section and was just delighted to find "A&C meet Frankenstein" getting such nice compliments.
I would like to let you all know that my father Robert Lees and his writing partner and an old family friend, Freddy Rinaldo, wrote this film.
Freddy is no longer with us but my father is still, all of 92 years old, and is thrilled that after all these years you all like the film.
A little addenda:
You all must remember that A&C were essentially radio comedians,
and it was from his training in radio that Costello had the bad habit of coming unglued if he didn't consistantly get laughs from the crew for each gag each take, no matter how many takes were involved in getting a scene right.. For him the crew was a live audience, so if he didn't take the house down, he would put in another piece of business and reinvent the scene on the spot until he did - and he was very inventive! I don't know how successfull they were, but they tried to take him aside and explain how important it was to actually follow the script!! Dad said that Lugosi enjoyed this aspect of Costello very much although I'm not so sure whether the director did, or the writers either for that matter.
Both Dad and Fred respected the "horror/terror" genre in literature very much noting to me when I was younger how complex and interesting the form had become in the hands of writers like Dunsynane Tolstoy Lovecraft Saki,or Poe to name a few.
Tolstoy wrote some strange and luminous things in this old form, once a short story about a Vampyre.
But in those days and by the time Universal Studios got through exploiting it all, "The Wolfman meets Dracula, meets Frankenstein,meets the Mummy, meets the Andrews Sisters" well, lets just say that the bloom was well off the rose.....
And so the object for them was not to parody the genre (at least the serious part) but to parody what Universal Studios had by this time done to the genre....
One of my favorite parts in the film is that sublimely dysfunctional chase scene at the end.
And its true, they had a blast writing the movie.

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Far and away the best Abbott & Costello Horror-Comedy, June 16, 2001

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (DVD)

Lou Costello was always the master of strangulated, speechless terror, so putting Abbott & Costello in a movie with the Wolfman, Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster was inspired. Getting Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange to play the Terror Trio was just icing on the cake. This time around Bud and Lou play Chick Young and Wilbur Gray, a pair of railroad baggage clerks in LaMiranda, Florida, who have to deliver two large crates to MacDougal's House of Horrors. Inside are Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, but of course they escape. To make things worse, Wilbur's beautiful girlfriend, Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert), is really a mad scientist who wants to put Wilbur's brain in the Monster. Fortunately, Lawrence Talbot (Chaney) has arrived from Europe on the trail of the monsters.

It is rather amazing how long this film goes with Wilbur being the only one to spot the monsters. The comedy in this movie is something of a departure for the comedy team, because it relies more on situational humor and not as much on the "Who's On First" word play. The scene pantomime scene with Lou on the Monster's lap is great, as is the final chase scene with the boys encountering one monster after another. "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is the first and the best of the boy's comic team-ups, which does not deserve the reputation it has in some quarters for having made the Universal monsters creatures of ridicule. That might be true of later Abbott & Costello monster comedies, but the charge would be truer of "House of Dracula" than this film, which has the same respect for the monsters as does "Young Frankentstein." Trivia Note: While filming the scene where the Monster throws Sandra through the lab window, Strange was knocked over and broke his ankle. Chaney, who had played the Monster in "Ghost of Frankenstein," volunteered to step in and once again don the makeup and he is the one who re-shot the scene that appears in the movie.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lugosi, Chaney Jr. and A & C at their best., April 16, 2001

By 

Christopher J. Jarmick "Word Lover" (Seattle, Wa. USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (DVD)

Abbott and Costello's best known and perhaps best film has them meeting Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman, then Bela Lugosi as Dracula, then Glenn Strange as Frankenstein and then. . . . The plot revolves around the idea that the perfect new brain for the Monster should be a simple one -on that's easy to control. Lou Costello's is simple enough. The slapstick begins when Bud and Lou refuse to believe Larry Talbot (Lon) is the wolfman. The best non-monster bits are variations on what Bud and Lou did in the still funny, Hold That Ghost. You will note that Dracula can be seen in mirrors and that he would not have really died from a long fall (that's not being left out in the sun or getting a stake in the heart). But who cares, this is a silly, enjoyable slapstick that gives us both Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi doing a wonderful job acting straight against the boy's antics. Glenn Strange is the Monster. Vincent Price does a cameo. (1948 - Directed by Charles Barton).