10: Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955, Charles Lamont)

Owned release: Universal box, 2008, you know the drill. (This is on Disc 14.)

Acquired: Amazon. 2014. February. It's a cold winter.

Seen before?: Once from this disc - August 1st, 2017.

So often we end up where we started. Where the team's penultimate Universal film, ...Meet the Keystone Kops, attempted to relight their spark by nestling them amongst some of their formative influences, Mummy brings them back to their roots in a couple of ways. The more obvious is that the types of comedy on display have been rebalanced; where the films immediately preceding it had included predominately physical humor and slapstick, this one scales that back and works in more of the verbal sparring and conceptual bits for which the duo were famed. I don't mean that as a generality - Mummy features restagings of several of the team's well-known bits, including another go at "Changing Room" (featured in ...Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff and before that in Hold That Ghost) and a very funny bit involving a cursed medallion hidden inside a hamburger that I'm told bears a similarity to a poison-swap bit done in both The Naughty Nineties and Pardon My Sarong. There's even a new bit, "Take Your Pick," written specifically for this film and meant to take advantage of the duo's verbal dexterity that nonetheless is based on the same general premise as "Who's on First?"

This may sound like complaining, but it's anything but - letting the boys back on familiar ground loosens them up and lets them fall back into a solid groove. The subsequent film, while not top-echelon, has what's probably the best work of this last stretch; the verbal patter has a welcome snap ("I never had a mummy!" "What'd your father do, win you in a crap game?"), there's some amusing left-field sight gags - Lou using a straw hat as a horn mute, Lou fighting with an arm that's emerged from the mouth of a stuffed lion head - and the plot, though over-complex, has each of its three chief threads culminate in someone donning a mummy costume, so that there's three mummies running around at the climax. Plus, there's a young Michael Ansara running around in a crisp white suit and being generally threatening, which is fun. And there's musical numbers! This last aspect is key, as it belies a fascinating dimension to this film's relationship with the team's established body of work.

There are, to be specific, four dance sequences and one song interspersed through this film. Two of the dance sequences are framed as Egyptian ritualism, while the other two (and the song) are explicitly performances for an audience in a cafe. During the first dance number, a lively and mock-violent piece involving two men, two women, a lot of flips and tumbles, and a little tap-dancing, it struck me that this would be a number not out of place on the burlesque circuit. You know, the same milieu in which Abbott and Costello came up and first made their name(s). The other musical interludes are woven through the film in such a way that they break up the action and provide a contrast, a different type of entertainment... much in the way musical numbers and striptease performances are interlaced with comedic routines in burlesque films. (And just when I thought that the one thing they didn't include was scantily-clad ladies, a beautiful blonde shows up at the end to provide some cheesecake and do a gag involving a snake dance.) What I see here is A&C going all the way back, past the films and into their early days as entertainers to see if they can't recapture that young hunger. That, despite their efforts, they ultimately can't and end up constructing a homage to themselves is also quietly encoded in the final product.

The last scene sees the two opening their own cafe with which to host routines in the vein of the one from the beginning of the film. And by "in the vein of," I mean "exactly the same as" - the routine we see at the end of the film as we tour their shiny new performance space is the one from the beginning of the film. And in that vein, this film sees Abbott & Costello using their own names as the names for their characters for the first time since their film debut One Night in the Tropics. Going back to the beginning often means bringing everything full circle, and while this wasn't intended to be the last vehicle for the team (indeed, they made one more film, Dance With Me, Henry, after this for an independent producer)  nor even their last film under Universal, there's a certain sense of finality that make this a proper outro - a closing of the circle, if you will. This may not have been intended as their final bow, but it works just fine as one anyway. There's worse notes to go out on.

8: Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955, Charles Lamont)

Owned release: The 2009 Universal box. This is on Disc 14.

Acquired: Amazon. Feb. 2014.

Seen before?: Once before from this disc - July 24, 2017.

The only one of the ...Meet films that couldn't be slotted sideways into the horror genre, and the weakest of the bunch. The team was well and truly running on fumes here, so a change of pace - going back to straight comedy after a run of genre hybrids - had to be appealing, and with the added benefit of being a homage to the old days of comedy. The late films, due to the necessity of avoiding the team's classic routines (as they were providing material for the duo's TV show), were heavy on the slapstick anyway, so why wouldn't they want to lean into that and pay their forebearers their due respect by crafting a slapstick comedy set during the early days of slapstick comedy - a sort of pratfall-laden wish-fulfillment vehicle/tip of the cap?

It's a nice idea, for sure. The execution, on the other hand... not so much. The funniest part of the movie is the very first sequence, with Lou making a sobbing nuisance of himself while watching a silent epic entitled Eliza and the Bloodhounds (which, in another instance of recycled history, is made of footage from 1927's Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Bud getting thrown into two flower pots within five minutes. Past that, it's a slow slide into genial mediocrity, with a few scattered chuckles (A&C running out of a tunnel with a train in hot pursuit; Lou giving the camera a knowing glance as he palms some loaded dice) and a lot of big, ostensibly-exciting hunks of vehicular mayhem that sit on screen and die. Given the focus on loud, dangerous stunts and car chases/plane chases, it could be argued that this is essentially the A&C equivalent of a big-budget FX comedy... but where the ideal of something like that is, say, Ghostbusters, this is closer to something like Evolution or Leonard Part 6, where the scale and extravagance fail to paper over the tired gags and minimum-effort performances.

What pushes it into the realms of the obnoxious is the film's insistence that this is indeed all a big screaming laff riot - the big biplane sequence has two crew members at two different points laughing hysterically at how funny this all is. One even tells the blowhard European director - who is actually a NYC con man, but that's something else - "This is very funny, Mr. Touminoff!" to which the director replies, "This is not supposed to be funny!" and here I am thinking they're both wrong. As an argument for the value of comedy in the face of misery and the desire to make "serious" art, this is hardly Sullivan's Travels, and the shaking by the lapels, demanding that we LAAAAAAAAAUGH, is unwelcome and frankly surprising for a duo whose chemistry generally makes this all feel so fluid. By the time the Keystone Kops show up to do their thing, the warmth of the homage has curdled into two steps off a rip-off, a film using the reputation of its predecessors to palm off some shabby goods - the Mack Sennett cameo is an embarrassment - and that's even before the final chase sequence straight-up steals a joke from Sherlock, Jr. In retrospect, it's funny that this has A&C tackling a con artist who's gone into making movies, because someone's getting conned here and it isn't the people on screen.

Note of interest: The villain's female sidekick is named Leona Van Cleef. As Lee Van Cleef was just beginning his career at this point, part of me wonders whether that's a weird shoutout or just a coincidence.

7: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951, Charles Lamont)

Owned release: That 2008 Universal box. This is on Disc 11.

Acquired: Feb. 2013. Amazon.

Seen before?: Once from this disc - July 11, 2017, at which point I gave it an unaccountably-grumpy two stars.

So, best I can tell, my reaction to this one and ...Meet Jekyll & Hyde were swapped - that's the only way I can explain my flipping for the mirthless Karloff vehicle while poo-pooing this knockabout winner. The comedy here is more intensely (and understandably) physical than average, though there's still room for verbal shenanigans (my favorite exchange, after the Invisible Man has shed his clothing to escape a room undetected: "How'd he get out of here?" "In installments.") and the occasional inspired bit of random lunacy, like a hypnosis session that turns into a goof on the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera. The script was constructed more or less in reverse, building from its delightful boxing climax, and while it generally feels that way - a lot of the plot beats are obligatory, e.g. the Mafia moll who tries to seduce Lou into throwing the fight and doesn't really exert much effort to do so, assuming it a more or less done deal right away - the strength of these later films, as previously discussed, is the points where they find inspiration in the familiar. We've seen Lou get scared by supernatural phenomena, but his reaction upon encountering the Invisible Man in a wood - a high-pitched eep, a levitating-hat gag and a quick in-camera effect that sees him diving completely under a car - is a winner. We expect that the plot will require the boys to catch the moll in the act of compromising Lou, but the gag being constructed so that he's trying to use a massive record player to capture her words is novel and amusing. When Lou feints at a speedbag so that the Invisible Man can sell him as a champion boxer, that's level one; the extra wrinkle comes when Lou hams it up and uses his forehead. The gags are given just enough of a twist to make them land, and the plot moves fast enough that the fact that it's senseless and dopey even by comedy-team standards is besides the point.

And just when you think there's no surprises and it's comfort all the way down the line, Lamont and the boys end on the image of Lou Costello in a diaper and his legs attached backward running in reverse through a glass hospital door. That may not be an ace in the sleeve, but that closing guffaw is worth at least a Queen of diamonds.

5: Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953, Charles Lamont)

Owned release: The 2008 Universal A&C box previously discussed. This is on disc 13.

Acquired: Feb. 2013 from Amazon.

Seen before?: Once from this disc - July 17th, 2017. I gave it three-and-a-half stars then, and I can no longer explain why.

In regards to second-handedness as discussed in my last review... there's always the danger of going too far with it. What starts as well-practiced and comfortable can instead begin to feel tired and shopworn.So it goes with this late entry, which tonally is cut from the same cloth as the great ...Meet Frankenstein - it clearly intends to be both a fun comedic romp and a thrilling horror film. But it's all aftermarket parts that have already been worn down to the nub. 

If anything, this feels like a modest horror script that was retrofitted to become an A&C vehicle - while the boys show up in the first big setpiece playing cops and get a couple decent laughs, they're essentially incidental to the major action (a brawl between suffragettes and chauvinists), and they don't become important to the film until 20 minutes have already elapsed. Said time is spent setting up an elaborate plot involving a young suffragette/dance-hall girl, a newspaper reporter who falls for her and the brilliant-but-mad Doctor Jekyll (played by Boris Karloff) who has been her guardian since her youth and is also in love with her... yet while both the fact of her political activism and her place of employment have a goodly amount of screentime lavished upon them, once A&C become the focus these facts are meaningless and change nothing about the stock damsel-in-distress character she becomes. A&C's characters, in a fit of imagination, are named Slim and Tubby. Karloff, who excelled at playing conflicted and sympathetic monsters, here does what he can with a stock evil jerk who bears no resemblance to Stevenson. The general feel here is a film far too large for its programmer-sized container, so instead of letting laughs and scares build organically and breathe, it's consistently tossing things out with a distracted eye on the next three things it has to do, thereby not noticing the thudding sounds of flubbed jokes.

In this wasteland, there are small pleasures to be mined - Lou getting to do a little graceful soft-shoe, an unexpected musical number in the opening sequence, Bud muttering, "Your hat's dirty" in preparation for a well-timed whack to Lou's head. Additionally, Lamont uses the genre to his advantage in terms of shot selection - his direction, typically workmanlike in most spots, does find a number of appropriately evocative and moody images, whether the opening shot of London just choked with fog or this lovely bit of shadow play executed like a live-action Looney Tune:

But really, this is just me searching for marginalia to figure what impressed me so much about it on first go. I guess I must have been in a giddy, forgiving mood. Because what we have here is the kind of movie that devises a sequence where Lou is turned into a giant mouse, and the only good chuckle it gets from that is ten minutes later when Bud finds a bottle of Moselle wine and assumes it's the brew that turned Lou into a rodent ("Mouse-elle!") And let's be honest - that's just me finding uncommon amusement at a wine-nerd joke.

4: Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950, Charles Lamont)

Owned release: The 2008 Universal A&C box. This is on disc 11.

Acquired: Feb. 2013, Amazon.

Seen before?: Once from this disc - June 26, 2017.

Lotta creak and lotta corn in this one - the thing about the Charles Lamont A&C films (as opposed to say, the Charles Barton films, which feel a bit tighter on the whole) is that they seem to wear their second-handedness without shame. Lamont is under no illusions about what's being made here, and he's trusting the expertise of his stars to put over a script that mostly contains everything you'd expect from a first draft whose parameters contain "Foreign Legion," "desert" and "Arabs." It's a weak adventure B-picture that just happens to have two extremely funny people wandering through it, laying waste to everything they touch. This is tweaked by the opening narration, which begins with grand pomposity, rhapsodizing about the merciless desert sun and the brave men of the Foreign Legion, before deflating to mention two boys "the Foreign Legion would like to forget."

A famous George Carlin bit has him arguing that anything can be made funny, and while he was talking about offensive or shocking humor, the same can be said about the sort of boilerplate concepts on display in Foreign Legion. It's about committing to the bit - the mirage bit, for instance, probably played flat on paper, but when you mix in Lou's four-stage disbelief at the ice cream soda in front of him, or the brief attempt to sit back down on the missing stool in hopes that it will rematerialize, or Bud's ecstatic reverie upon finding an actual oasis... well, it kills. Lou misfiring a machine gun could in theory be good for a couple chuckles, but the bit runs and runs, gathering more absurdity with each passing minute, turning it into a gleeful dose of destructive anarchy. There's fewer laughs in the material involving the Arab villains, mostly from the necessity of having to keep an element of danger in the narrative (and also, yeah, kinda racist), but even so there's some amusing flourishes of marginalia, like the emcee at the slave-trade auction descending into pure auctioneer gibberish or the His and multiple Hers towels briefly glimpsed as a background gag in the climax as the boys drive a car through a harem bath. They're dumb jokes, but they work because the involved parties were committed to them.

Here's where the canniness comes in - "selling the bit" is also the whole point of the narrative. The story hinges on A&C's involvement in a crooked wrestling scam run by a Mafioso type. The conflict arises when one of the wrestlers, an enormous man-mountain named Abdullah the Assassin, refuses to commit to the bit he's signed on for and lose to his opponent. He then buggers off back home to Algiers, and the boys have to follow him at the behest of the Mafioso, who has a lot of money riding on the match. After a series of misadventures, they fall into the clutches of an evil sheik who is also of course a cousin to Abdullah. Bud and Lou are sentenced to be torn limb from limb by the sheik's wrestlers, Abdullah and another fellow played by Tor Johnson, but Abdullah reveals to Lou that he's ready to go back to America and will help them escape by rigging the wrestling match - by deciding, at last, to sell the bit that he couldn't bring himself to do before. That commitment to wholehearted fakery in the name of entertainment saves the day, even as the ruse that saves the day - the "Boston routine" - is a cheap and obvious ploy. The people making these films... they were smart cookies in my opinion.

Also, there is a catfish who wears false teeth and spits water in Lou's face. Just felt like that needed to be mentioned.

3: Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953, Charles Lamont)

Owned release: Included as part of the Complete Universal Pictures set released by Universal in 2008 (the one in the big stupid box that looks like a steamer trunk and has a top-open lid on which the hinges split at the slightest provocation, not the currently available version released later that replaced the box with a slipcover). This film is on Disc 13 (of 15).

Acquired: February of 2015 from Amazon.

Seen before?: Once from this disc - June 13, 2017.

It's an interesting thing doing this alphabetically - there are certain things I know I'm going to have to skip around on (I recently watched Ginger knowing I'll be tackling The Abductors within the next week or two, and I wouldn't dream of watching Aparajito before watching Pather Panchali), but other films I feel all right taking out of order. Like, for instance, this Abbott & Costello box set. Going alphabetically means I'll be dealing with the later films, generally considered their weakest work, before getting to the stuff that made them big. While there's no issues of continuity between these films, obviously, there is part of me that wonders if I'm not more affectionate towards the films I've seen from them so far because of that lack of historical perspective - since I haven't seen the earlier films, I can't tell what's been reused, which routines are old hat, which gags have had better (or, to be fair, worse) effect elsewhere... essentially, I'm coming to these films sans context. The booklet that comes with the box set notes when certain famous routines are used in certain films, and Mars does have one specific routine - "Venusian Balloons" - that is a rewrite of an earlier bit, "Tree of Truth," that cropped up in 1942's Pardon My Sarong. Would I find the rendition of the bit here less amusing if I was familiar with the earlier iteration? (It's isn't that sharp anyway, so maybe it's a moot point.)

The interesting thing in that regard is that A&C clearly know that, since they'd been grinding out these films for over a decade (and for years before that as a stage & radio team), and as such the overelaborate plot makes room for two escaped convicts whose main purpose is to facilitate a mistaken identity switch on the boys when the convicts rob a bank. The joke, of course, is that these two have the same look and dynamic as the leads, right down to the big dopey one using the catchphrase, "I am with you." Though the best setpiece is the delightful slow-motion sequence in space, the New Orleans segment, where A&C mistakenly believe themselves to be on Mars, is on the whole the funniest section of this extremely episodic film, offering gags both silly (the convicts using a ray gun to freeze bank employees, including one guy in the middle of drinking from a water fountain) and surreal ("I broke the girl in half!"). It kinda falls flat once they get to Venus (not Mars - truth in advertising took a sleep here) and deal with the all-female, all-swimsuit model society that lives there, but even the weakest material is well-sold by the leads, as smooth and professional a comedy team as any that ever worked. Their chemistry and easy rapport wrings laughs from even the dumbest wordplay ("What makes a balloon go up?" "Hot air." "Then what's keepin' you down?") and Costello's reactions in particular create extra punchlines that kill even when the scripted ones fall flat. (When Costello spots one of the convicts for the first time, seeing him only from behind in his prison stripes, the laugh doesn't come when he describes him as "a zebra without any tail" - it's a bit earlier when he emits this two-stage gulped shriek that sounds like he's trying to scream inward down his own throat.) They made funnier films - I've seen some of them already - but there's value in seeing the wonders great comedians can do with middling material. So am I laughing at this stuff because I don't know exactly how second-hand it is, or am I laughing just because Abbott and Costello were funny guys and if they do reuse material, there's not much difference between that and a rewatch of a favorite comedy?

Note of interest #1: In a film so wrapped in flight and space travel, it's a knowing gag that has the first shot of the film be a toy glider in the air being piloted by Costello's character. Whose name is Orville.

Note of interest #2: A laugh that exists now  in a way it wouldn't have before - when Costello asks the queen of Venus about the possibility of getting a nice juicy steak, she explains that they have food pills instead, then pauses a beat and says, "We have pills for everything." I imagine the innuendo was intended even back in 1953, but post-Viagra, there's an extra edge there. Especially since that society hadn't seen a man in 400 years.