London. Lawrence Talbot makes a phone call to Florida to talk to the chubby Wilbur, a baggage clerk at a railway station, and warn him about two incoming crates intended for McDougal's House Of Horrors, a wax museum, but before he can finish, Talbot transforms under the full moon into a Werewolf, and Wilbur hangs up. The two crates arrive, and they contain Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster. Wilbur spots them, but his colleague Chick does not believe him when the two freaks are gone. Dracula blackmails Dr. Sandra into assisting his plan of getting Wilbur's brain transplanted into Frankenstein's Monster. Talbot appears at a mask party as a Werewolf and attacks a man, and Chick is later blamed for it since he wore a Werewolf mask. Sandra seduces Wilbur and brings him to Dracula's laboratory, but Chick and Talbot show up, freeing Wilbur. The Werewolf falls into the sea holding Dracula transformed into a bat. Frankenstein's Monster gets killed on a bridge set on fire.
In one the most popular movies of Abbott and Costello, the comedy duo was placed in a crossover with Universal's movie monsters Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the Werewolf, delivering a peculiar syncretism that works rather well, giving a sense of danger and weight to the slapstick duo. "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" works the best in the crazy, burlesque opening act, which has inspiration. In it, a man in London, Talbot, has a phone call with Wilbur (the hilarious Lou Costello), but the former suddenly transforms into a Werewolf in the middle of the conversation, howling, and Wilbur mistakes it for a dog barking on the phone (!) or something else ("Mr. McDougal, will you stop gurgling your throat?"), so he hangs up. The sequence is genius because the writers Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo and John Grant realize how absurd the concept is and thus treat is almost as a spoof. Unfortunately, the inspiration of the film exhausts itselfs fairly quickly and stops at just the same old "singing frog" gag being repeated again and again: Wilbur sees Dracula and/or Frankenestein's Monster, and calls for Chick, but by the time Chick arrives, the monsters hide and thus Chick thinks Wilbur is lying. This situation takes over half of the film's running time, and feels contrived, forced and annoying. The movie is thus vegitating for way too long, without much ideas getting prepared beforehand, until the amusing finale involving Wilbur tied up to a stretcher on wheels, who pushes himself away with his foot from Frankenstein's Monster, but then gets caught up in the middle of Dracula and the Werewolf, who are using the stretcher to keep a dstance between themselves. The movie needed more of these kind of "proper" comical moments, though it has its moments due to Abbott and Costello's chemistry, even in dialogues ("Why don't you go take a look at yourself in the mirror?" - "Why should I hurt my own feelings?").
Grade:++
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