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The approach is correctly derived from Groucho's appreciation of the straight man who isn't in on the joke, with the Universal beasts playing collective Margaret Dumont to Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The first collision of Old World horror and Yank vaudeville takes place at the Florida depot where the boys work, the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) calls from London and growls gruesomely on one end of the phone while Costello barks on the other. Lights out at the carnival's haunted house, a coffin creaks open and a pale claw reaches out. "People pay cash to come here and get scared." "I'm cheatin'. I'm gettin' scared for nothin'!" The comedy is satisfyingly built on the questionable improvement of a brain transplant between the Frankenstein Creature (Glenn Strange) and Costello, who here fancies himself a lothario between a comely scientist (Lenore Aubert) and a fraud-investigating blonde (Jane Randolph). (Abbott can't figure out his pal's appeal, he's busy being chased by a mob after wearing a lupine mask to the costume party.) The macabre icons meanwhile proceed as if in their own canonical horror tales, from the Wolf Man's agonized irritation with the wisecracks around him to the fiery demise awaiting the Creature to the dapper glee of Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) sinking his fangs into his accomplice's jugular. "You can have her, but make sure you've got plenty of bandages." An irrepressible monster mash from Charles Barton, as self-reflexive as Hellzapoppin', enough to teach Tarantino himself about blurring genre lines. The Fearless Vampire Hunters, Young Frankenstein and Re-Animator are among the beneficiaries. With Frank Ferguson, Charles Bradstreet, and Vincent Price as the voice of the Invisible Man. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |