Review of Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953) by Paladin Of Odin — 27 Oct 2008

There are, if you're curious, [i]nine[/i] movies starting with "Abbott and Costello Meet." (That's if you count [i]Abbott and Costello meet Jerry Seinfeld[/i], which you probably shouldn't.) Any one of the lot would be a good Christmas gift for Graham, whose fondness for them actually surpasses his fondness for Francis, the Talking Mule. (Really.) I don't mind 'em, either, but I can't really take a great amount of it at any one time. You see, while they're not as funny as the Marx Brothers, they follow a lot of the same patterns as the Marx Brothers--there is a lot of wackiness from Abbott and Costello, but we're also supposed to care about a romantic subplot between two people we've never heard of before. There's more structure to hang the story off in some than in others--in both cases--but I think the important part is that the Marx Brothers' hilarity is simply funnier.

Abbott and Costello play Slim and Tubby, two of the most unlikely policemen in Victorian England. They don't even try to make it believable in any way. They're just sort of there, and the movie must work around it. At any rate, "The Monster" is terrorizing London, and if they can capture it, it will make up for the fact that they're not actually good cops. They encounter the lovely "Vicky" (really--she's played by Helen Westcott), a music hall girl who has Dr. Henry Jekyll (poor Boris Karloff) as her guardian. Because any respectable doctor of the Victorian era would be [i]thrilled[/i] to have a ward on the stage. Abbott and Costello trip over the evidence that shows that The Monster is really Dr. Jekyll (I'm not sure he ever gets called Mr. Hyde), and hilarity ensues.

Dr. Jekyll is a much darker figure here than he is in the book. (Of course I've read the book!) He is actually, as IMDB points out, willing to become the monster for the express purpose of killing someone, a thing the Dr. Jekyll in the book would abhor. It's true that there [i]are[/i] victims in the book, but Dr. Jekyll doesn't do it on purpose. It's the subconcious that is projected into Hyde. Jekyll here plans to kill Bruce Adams (Craig Stevens)--and didn't these people know [i]anything[/i] about Victorian names?--because Adams intends to wed Vicky, which Jekyll wants to do. Jekyll took the serum so he could do things of low taste--like attending music halls!--not so he could have revenge on his enemies. Jekyll didn't [i]have[/i] enemies.

Everyone I know (except Graham, of course) only really seems to know Abbott and Costello from the "Who's on First" routine, and that's certainly a good place to start. Better than their World War II military films, which were only an odd sort of propaganda in the first place. When I was in high school, our school newspaper featured a review of [i]Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein[/i] because one of the kids in my journalism class wanted to review "something unusual." (He became a huge Abbott and Costello fan after that.) It's sad but true that they haven't aged well. Oh, better than Mae West. But not well.

Graham loves Abbott and Costello, and the opportunity to review a ton more of these movies is certainly there, especially on weekends, when we pretty much just watch what he wants to watch. I just don't think I want to do too many of them at a time. We'll probably have one Friday--it'd be nice to do something a little spooky for Halloween, and [i]Full Metal Jacket[/i] is the wrong kind of scary--but I don't expect to do Abbot and Costello over and over again until we're done with all of them. Or even just the other eight "meet" movies. But, yes, perhaps we'll throw one in every once in a while, when Graham isn't interested in my Netflix or anything I've brought home from the library.