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By
NICK ZEGARAC
Volume 3 of "The Best of
Abbott & Costello" effectively celebrates the
final flowering of Bud and Lou's critical and
financial success at Universal Studios. By this
point, the mutual contempt shared in their private
relationship had begun to spill over into their
professional outings. Some films in this
collection escape that cynicism. Others are
glaring examples of a collaborative teaming gone
horribly awry.
The first film in this franchise collection,
"Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein" (1948) is
one of A&C's best. It effectively launched what
would become a main staple for the duo during
these later years: pitting comedic prowess against
Universal's classic array of monsters. In this
film, Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are a
couple of movers hired to deliver supposedly wax
figures of Dracula and the Frankenstein monster to
a museum. However, when the two actually turn out
to be alive, Wilbur finds himself the target of a
diabolical plot to transplant his brain into the
monster's body.
In "Mexican Hayride" (1948) Joe (Costello) is
swindled by Harry (Abbott) and tails him to Mexico
where the two join forces for a silver mine
swindle.
In "Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer" (1949) a
simple-minded bellboy, Freddie (Costello),
stumbles on a corpse. Suspected of the murder,
Freddie joins forces with detective Casey Edwards
(Abbott) to solve the crime.
In "Abbott & Costello in the Foreign Legion"
(1950) two wrestling promoters (Bud and Lou) find
themselves in hot water with a sheik and his paid
assassins. By this point in the A&C franchise the
plots tend to become simple rehashes of previous
A&C pictures.
"Abbott & Costello meet the Invisible Man" is a
thinly disguised attempt to rekindle the laughs
from "Meet the Killer," though with far less
success.
"Comin' Round the Mountain" is a pale ghost to
A&C's "Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap," in which
Wilbur and Chick go to Kentucky to claim an
inheritance from some backwoods bumpkins with
predictable results.
"Lost in Alaska" has the faint aroma of "Hit the
Ice," though minus its sterling production values
and much of the laughter that illuminated the
latter.
And finally, there is the most bizarre of the A&C
comedies, "Abbott & Costello Go to Mars." The
title is deceiving since the duo never go to Mars
but actually mistake Mardi Gras in New Orleans for
a foreign planet -- then accidentally blast
themselves off for real -- only to hit the planet
Venus which is populated by sultry, half-naked
women and really big dogs. Don't ask!
Universal's DVD exhibits a decidedly middle of the
road visual characteristic. The grayscale on some
of these films is nicely balanced. Others appear
to suffer from low contrast levels and very weak
black levels. All are riddled with a barrage of
age-related artifacts. Some of the transfers have
a hint of edge enhancement and pixelization.
Overall the picture quality on this batch of films
is not very smooth, though at times there is a
considerably accurate and clean visual
characteristic to be had. Inconsistently rendered
is perhaps the best assessment of these transfers.
The audio for all is Mono and exhibits a generally
pleasing quality that is in keeping with the
vintage of the film. Extras include theatrical
trailers for all of the films as well as
production notes for a hand full of the titles
included herein. |
