ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) **1/2 Lou Costello thinks he's quite the ladies' man: he has dates with two hot babes for the masquerade ball. Babe #1 turns out to be in cahoots with Bela Lugosi, and after he bites her neck she can barely stay awake for Costello's prattle. Babe #2 is even worse, an insurance fraud investigator. Babe #1 ties Costello up and tries to take out his brain to put it in in Frankenstein, but fails in the face of intervention by The Wolf Man (Lon Chaney, Jr. stumbling unmightily over bombastic proclamations). Babe #2 runs off with a lab technician. Lugosi is tremendous as always, injecting life into the most torpid lines, and the script writers did him the favour of naming Costello "Wilbur." I know he doesn't exist, and you know he doesn't exist, but does Dracula know he doesn't exist? The House of Horrors looks a lot like the U.S. House of Representatives on C-SPAN.
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