Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #14

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#14. Hold That Ghost (1941- dir. Albert S. Rogell)

Is this reeeally a ghost story? Yes, it is. Allow me to refer you to the moving-candlestick gag. How’s that thing moving? Wires? Hardly! Now that your doubts are quelled, let’s just focus on the tremendous fun abounding in Abbott & Costello’s admittedly tentative first outing in the realm of the supernatural. The boys inherit an old dark house from a gangster and hilarity ensues. Much of that hilarity rises not from the team of Bud and Lou but the team of Lou and Joan Davis. She’s spectacular in this picture. More sparks fly during her dance routine with Costello than all of Evelyn Ankers and Richard Carlson’s forced romantic scenes put together.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 2

The Date: October 2

The Movie: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

What Is It?: Dracula wants to stick Lou Costello’s brain into the Frankenstein Monster’s head. Lou and Bud Abbott would rather he did not do that, and they employ The Wolf Man to thwart the Count. Who wins? You do, sucker!

Why Today?: On this day in 1895, Bud Abbott was born.

20 Things You May Not Have Known About Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

A Halloween season without Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is like a Christmas without A Christmas Carol or a Thanksgiving without that movie about Thanksgiving. So this year before you sit down to munch a bowl of brains and laugh yourself stupid while watching Bud, Lou, Drac, Frankie, and Wolfie’s antics, shove this information into your brain hole, a tasty heap of tidbits I call 20 Things You May Not Have Known About Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein!

1. As The Brain of Frankenstein could have easily been the title of any of Universal’s more serious monster movies, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s meeting with the Frankenstein Monster was wisely retitled.
 

2. As they themselves trumpet, the opening credits sequence of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was animated by Walter Lantz, who is most famous for bringing Woody Woodpecker to life. Coincidentally, animation designer Nino Carbe, who also worked on Woody, illustrated Illustrated Editions’ 1932 “De Luxe Edition” of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel.

3. Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello’s first tentative foray into the supernatural, is most famous for Lou’s moving candle gag, in which only he can see the object move of its own accord. He recreates this famous scene with the help of Dracula’s casket lid in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

4. While Glenn Strange played the Frankenstein Monster as many times as Boris Karloff (three times), he spent a lot less time in his gear. For Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Strange’s latex and foam mask took a mere hour to apply. By Karloff’s account, that is some five hours fewer than it took Jack P. Pierce to apply his cotton and collodion makeup (though a 1932 issue Picturegoer reported that Pierce’s makeup job took a more reasonable three and a half hours).