ABBOTT & COSTELLO: THE COMPLETE 80th ANNIVERSARY UNIVERSAL PICTURES COLLECTION - Blu-ray (Universal, 1940-55) Shout! Factory
The squat self-deprecating ‘fat man’ and his ever-cynical straight and
skinny sidekick: was there ever a more perfect pairing than Bud Abbott and Lou
Costello? For, although the era in which they worked was a hotbed of now iconic
lowbrow comedy acts; the Marx Bros., The Three Stooges, and, Laurel and Hardy
among them; arguably, no one could pull off the mind-boggling split-second
timing in wordy repartee better than Bud and Lou. ‘Who’s on First?’ has
become such a zeitgeist in the popular lexicon (voted by Time Magazine
as the greatest comedy sketch of the 20th century) that in hindsight one tends
to forget the myriad of other contributions ‘the boys’ have made to
popular culture. On stage, on the radio, in the movies and finally, on
television, Abbott and Costello blazed a trail, the likes of which has never
been equaled in the annals of great comedy teams; becoming the inspiration for
hundreds of comedians who came afterward. If not for their affinity to remain
true to their Burlesque roots, we might have lost an entire era in popular
Americana; their riotous sketches, populating 36 movies; 28 made for perennially
cash-strapped Universal Studios.
No denying it: Universal was in a very bad way when it chose to gamble
on the lavish musical, One Night in the Tropics (1940), casting Abbott
and Costello in support of Alan Jones, Nancy Kelly and Robert Cummings. The
popularity of the studio’s first cycle in Gothic horror had run out of steam,
while the studio’s number one star - soprano, Deanna Durbin was increasingly
proving a handful. Despite Universal’s
spectacular investment of time and money, One Night in the Tropics was
not a hit. And yet, perhaps in part because of their enduring longevity on the
radio, Bud and Lou caught the vapors of public interest; audiences and critics
alike, warming to their comedic comfortability. Even in their first movie, they
emerged as the seasoned pros. Universal could sense something in the wind, and
decided to build a picture around its two costars. The war-themed Buck
Privates (1941) was an immediate box office sensation; one of the biggest
and brightest money makers in years; its infectious blend of patriotism,
uber-silly Burlesque routines and ‘The Andrews Sisters’ – effectively giving
Universal a formula they wasted no time in exploiting. In 1941, Bud and Lou
appeared in four movies; three of them devoted to their befuddled involvement
in various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. Still, it was the anomaly in this
early cycle – a spook-filled whodunit - Hold That Ghost! (1941) that, would
foreshadow the latter-day renaissance for this team.
On the surface, Bud and Lou were riding high. However, behind the laughter
and congenial public facades, Abbott and Costello were infrequently something
less than good humored. Lou, a fiery dynamo, regularly clashed with directors
over the material they were being given. And there was more than a hint of animosity
about his being chronically typecast as the childlike simpleton. After all,
Lou’s earliest ambitions had been as a serious actor rather than a comedian.
Fortuitously, this way to fame and fortune was barred. The dates are a little
sketchy, but Abbott and Costello likely crossed paths for the first time
somewhere around 1935 while doing the Vaudeville circuit; electing, after a
brief and successful stint, to go their separate ways before reuniting nine
months later. Most of their best routines from their movies were mined first,
on the radio and stage, and much later, regurgitated for television:
time-honored chestnuts from Burlesque, perennially resurrected for newer
audiences, and, in different mediums, stemming from their expert calibration to
elicit maximum laughter. Like the
enduring popularity of the great American song books from this same era, the routines
of Abbott and Costello have since been canonized as celebrated masterworks in
the steamer trunk of America’s vintage shtick.
Were, that their private lives could have been as rosy. But hardship,
self-doubt, gambling debts, health concerns and family tragedy only added to
the mounting friction between Bud and Lou. In reality, Lou’s on-stage innocence
obscured what was, behind closed doors, a fairly aggressive personality.
Harboring a grudge against Abbott ever since the proceeds from their professional
union were divided 60/40 in Bud’s favor, Lou demanded all future earnings be
split 60/40 in his favor. He also
renewed an objection to billing. Universal’s management stood their ground on
this one. They had hired ‘Abbott and Costello’, not the other way around. But as
negotiations progressed, Universal agreed to up Lou’s salary. Although not the
split he had hoped for, Costello decidedly made more than Abbott from their
movie partnership, stirring additional acrimony between them. Lou’s frequent
cracks about ‘straight men’ being a dime a dozen while genuine comedians were a
rarefied breed, also did not sit well with Bud; particularly, as he knew what
Lou’s career had been without him. Alas, and despite this indignation, as the
years passed, Bud and Lou became devoted to each other on and off the
screen. Hence, when Lou’s infant son
drowned in a backyard pool in 1943, just shy of his first birthday, Bud – who was
godfather to the boy – arrived first on the scene to comfort a devastated Lou.
Director, Charles Barton has recalled how, in their later films, Bud drank
rather heavily to conceal the effects of his chronic epilepsy; relying on Lou
to ‘snap him out of it’ when the tremors became so awful, nothing short of a
sock pump in the ribs would reset his system.
By 1954, Universal had tired of Bud and Lou…or perhaps it was the other
way around. For some time, Lou was increasingly irritated by the material being
offered them. In fact, he all but refusing to shoot 1948’s Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein (renown today as one of their all-time great
comedies); telling co-screenwriter, Robert Lees, “My daughter can write
better stuff than that!” To some extent, one can sympathize with Lou’s
detachment and frustrations. Here they were, the studio’s number one box office
draw – a record remarkably held for nearly an entire decade – despite
Universal’s executive logic, and yet, never allowed a respite from the screen,
thereby never whetting the public’s appetite for more. Every time a new Bud and
Lou picture was dumped onto the market, Universal circled the wagons with
several elaborate double bill reissues from their back catalog. The few loan
outs, mostly to MGM and Warner Bros.; MGM responsible for one shiny musical
extravaganza (1942’s Rio Rita) and two rather turgidly scripted
programmers (Lost in the Harem 1944, and, Abbott and Costello in
Hollywood 1945); after 1955’s Abbott and Costello meet The Mummy, Universal
officially let Bud and Lou go. They were hardly big news and not nearly as
light on their feet. In hindsight, Lou’s fragile heart was slowly getting the
better of him, as was Bud’s epilepsy.
Nevertheless, the boys trudged onward; appearing in a half-hour TV
series for 52 episodes; most drawing on situations reworked from their
Burlesque routines. In 1957, Lou dissolved their partnership for good to pursue
a solo stand-up career in Vegas. It was short-lived. On March 3, 1959, Lou
Costello died of a heart attack at the age of 53. His widow would barely
outlast him, dying in December that same year – presumably of a broken heart –
at the age of 47. “There are only two
times my dad cried,” Bud’s daughter, Vickie Abbott Wheeler would later
recall, “When his brother, Harry died and when he heard about Lou.” Bud Abbott would outlive his partner by nearly
15 years; in the interim, attempting a comeback with Candy Candido and later,
committing his own voice to a Hanna-Barbera animated series in which Stan Irwin’s
brilliant vocalizations subbed in for Lou. A series of epilepsy-related strokes
did much to slow Bud down. In 1972, he broke his hip. Two years later, he died
of cancer at the age of 78. Asked by a reporter to quantify the loss, fellow comedian
and contemporary, Groucho Marx gave the most fitting epitaph, calling Bud Abbott,
“the greatest straight man who ever lived.”
Life and art are rarely reconciled. Much less, do they run a parallel
course. Mercifully, the films of Abbott
and Costello evoke a vibrant heritage. Without Bud and Lou, we would have no
record of these time-honored sketches. Bud and Lou may not have invented these
routines, repeatedly mined for laughs in their Universal Pictures. But they
nevertheless, sold each as slickly packaged slapstick with precision-based
timing that has made a good deal of their legacy endure as among the most
cherished movie-land memories from our collective consciousness. Moreover, the team’s razor-sharp delivery is
unmistakable; quick and snappy with an elegantly refined play on words, most
memorably displayed in their iconic ‘Who’s on First?’ performed in two
separate movies for Universal; the aforementioned One Night in The Tropics
and The Naughty Nineties (1945). In all, Bud and Lou were partnered
together for a record 21 years, 460 radio broadcasts and 36 motion pictures; to
say nothing of their numerous television and Broadway performances. They
continue to hold a hallowed place in our hearts, and remain the only comedy
team in history to have 5 stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame: each, their
own; one for their combined work in radio, another for their mega-contribution to
motion pictures, and yet another for their body of work on TV, to say nothing
of their 3 Hall of Fame inductions in baseball, radio and, in New
Jersey.
Perhaps, as Frank Morgan astutely points out to Jack Haley’s Tin Man in The
Wizard of Oz (1939), “…a heart is not judged by how much you love, but
by how much you are loved by others.” In the intervening decades, Bud and
Lou have been beloved by comics, audiences and critics alike. And like the
preamble to Oz, “time has been powerless to set (their) kindly
philosophies out of fashion.” They endure, partly because we could all use
a good clean laugh these days; moreover, because to bask in the afterglow of
their magnificent genius is to be royally entertained as few actors – much
less, comedians – have been able to do, so consistently, and, for as many
years. While profitability ought never be considered the barometer by which
greatness is measured, it behooves the reader to reconsider that in 1941 alone,
Bud and Lou’s 4 movies were responsible for 25% of Universal’s gross, and this,
spread over 56 other features made in that same year! Not everything they did
was golden. Due to their frequent
feuding, 1946’s Little Giant, based on a Broadway smash hit, proved a
clumsy flop, keeping the duo separated for much of its run time. That same year
saw the release of The Time of Their Lives, a lavishly appointed picture
about ghostly intervention, but in which Bud and Lou were again separated by
nearly a century of progress. The Time of Their Lives is, today,
regarded as one of their greatest movies. But in 1946, it failed to find its
audience. Near the end of their Universal tenure, quality decidedly fell off;
1950’s In the Foreign Legion, 1952’s Lost in Alaska, and, 1955’s Meet
the Keystone Cops, among their weakest efforts. However, in the pantheon of great comedy acts,
Abbott and Costello unequivocally proved that even at their worst, they were
considerably ahead of the pack, if not up to their own usually high standards.
Shout! Factory has unfurled the same Abbott and Costello: The
Complete Universal Pictures Collection, previously available only on DVD;
now, on Blu-ray. It is a worthy upgrade, if still cribbing from unevenly
preserved elements. As with its standard-def
predecessor, this hi-def set includes all 28 movies made at Universal,
beginning with One Night in The Tropics (1940) and ending with 1955’s Meet
the Mummy. Any thorough analysis of
the films is fairly futile in a review format. Suffice it to say, what’s here
is pure gold. One Night in the Tropics: in retrospect, tests the waters
with a wacky musical claptrap in which Bud and Lou play second fiddle to
crooner, Alan Jones, cast as a ‘love insurance’ salesman, while dodging would-be
thugs sent to apprehend a wayward friend - millionaire, Steve Harper (Robert
Cummings). Infused with some memorable routines and also a stellar score by
Jerome Kern, including the spectacular set piece, the Farandola, One Night
in the Tropics may not be first-tier A&C, but it does not miss the mark
by much; a highly enjoyable excursion.
The boys’ early cinematic tenure is a rapid succession of mega-hits; 1941
alone, launches Buck Privates, In the Navy, Hold That Ghost
and Keep ‘Em Flying. In Buck Privates, Bud and Lou are
accidentally drafted into the Army, with similar circumstances befalling them
in the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the aforementioned other movies. The one
exception to these patriotic flag-wavers is Hold That Ghost, a riotous
spook-fest in which A&C inherit a rundown tavern from a deceased
bootlegger. Virtually all of these excursions feature musical performances by The
Andrews Sisters – Patti, Maxim and Laverne; a hot swing and jitterbug trio
that, for a while, became an inseparable part of the A&C Universal formula;
the studio, cranking out A&C movies like link sausage. Hold That Ghost
is also notable for superb foil, Joan Davis, cast as a pseudo-love interest for
Lou, or as Lou explains it, “We had a runaway marriage…she bought the
license and I ran away!” Lou was not particularly fond of Davis, perhaps
realizing she was not merely an appendage in their routines but a formidable
comedienne in her own right who, in several of the movie’s key comic vignettes,
all but steals the show. In hindsight, Hold That Ghost has held up
remarkably well; its deft blend of comedy and scares foreshadowing Bud and
Lou’s later outings, facing down virtually all of the studio’s classic monsters.
1942’s roster of A&C classics begins in earnest with Ride ‘Em
Cowboy; another musical, casting Bud and Lou as an unlikely pair of dude
ranch hands. The picture also features a very young Ella Fitzgerald in a
classic performance of ‘A Tisket, A Tasket’; and the Pied Pipers
warbling a few ditties along the dusty trail. The laughs continue with Pardon
My Sarong as Bud and Lou become stranded on a tropical island and find
themselves at the mercy of native savages. The year’s piece de resistance,
however, is Who Done It?: a radio-land murder mystery gone awry when Bud
and Lou set themselves up to solve a real crime taken place within the confines
of a broadcast of the popular ‘Murder at Midnight’ series; eventually
unearthing a coded message by a Nazi sympathizer. The film is also notable for Mary Wickes’
strong performance as smart-talking script doctor, Juliet Collins, whom Lou
attempts to woo, merely to land a spot on the radio. “…and the moral of the
story is ‘crime doesn’t pay’…and neither did she!”
By 1943, Bud and Lou’s Teflon-coated reputations with audiences were
secured: Universal poured all of its resources into a Damon Runyon-esque
musical; It Ain’t Hay – long delayed in its home video release due to an
embattled rights’ issue. Bud and Lou are befuddled taxi drivers who help a
young girl fulfill her dreams of entering her pony in the Grand National. In Hit
the Ice, Bud and Lou find work as a pair of waiters at a Sun Valley Resort,
forced to dodge the mob after becoming embroiled in a scheme to defraud the
retreat. By the end of 1943, Bud and Lou needed a break; both from work and
each other. Although the aforementioned movies made 1943’s releases all box
office winners, the returns were bolstered significantly by Universal’s
reissues of Hold That Ghost and Who Done It? And Lou had suffered
the loss of his only son, leaving a scar Maxim Andrews would later recollect, “…changed
him forever.” Indeed, tempers had
flared on the set of both movies. While Universal regrouped with plans to
relaunch their most lucrative franchise, Lou would see to it, the team made
only three movies the following year; the first, In Society (1944) a
rather tepid distraction with Bud and Lou mistaken for members of the social
elite invading a country club, and later, crashing an estate auction in which a
world-famous painting is stolen. The second outing, Here Come the Co-Eds
(1944) – yet another musical, minus The Andrews Sisters – was set at Bixby; a
fictional all-girl’s college where, as janitors, the boys attempt to save the
school from foreclosure. Finally, there was The Naughty Nineties – a
careworn rehash of the team’s Vaudeville performances, notable only for
preserving the complete ‘Who’s on First?’ routine on celluloid; all of
it, set aboard a river boat circa 1890.
By 1946, Bud and Lou were at each other’s throats. Not only were they
dissatisfied with Universal’s marketing of their movies, they were increasingly
aware the material in their last few movies had been substandard, strictly –
and rather cruelly – devised by Universal to capitalize on their box office
appeal. At times like this, Lou had a remarkably simple plan to counterbalance
this studio greed. He simply would not show up to work – holding up production
for days, feigning illness. Hence, in 1946, Universal compensated the team with
two of its most unusual properties; the first – Little Giant, proved a
minor disaster. For the first time, Bud and Lou played characters unknown to
one another. Based on a stage hit (another departure for the team), the film
version of Little Giant did not gel with the public. It lost money, and
deservedly so, as it quite simply lacked the old A&C chemistry audiences
were expecting. Not having learned their
lesson, Universal’s second attempt to keep Bud and Lou apart in The Time of
Their Lives, equally failed to find its audience. However, unlike Little
Giant, The Time of Their Lives was a superbly scripted ‘ghost
fantasy’ with a preamble set during America’s revolutionary war; Lou and
costar, Marjorie Reynolds (pregnant at the time), mistaken for traitors, shot
to death, and, seemingly condemned to haunt the estate at Danbury Acres
forever. For his part, Bud played a modern-day descendant of Lou’s old arch
nemesis, determined to rectify the no good of his ancestors and help set the
ghosts free.
The Time of Their Lives is a particularly endearing movie; chiefly, because
it does not play to the old Burlesque routines; also, in part, owed its superb
casting: Binnie Barnes as the street savvy, Mrs. Dean and Gale Sondergaard as
an extremely unsettling and strangely morbid housekeeper, Emily, who, in the
movie’s pivotal séance, channels the spirit of Lady Melody’s long dead lover,
Thomas Danbury and helps guide the ghosts to discovering a clue that will set
them free from the curse upon their souls. After the box office failure of The Time of
Their Lives the studio attempted to turn back the clock with a sequel to
one of their brightest money makers of 1942: 1947’s Buck Privates Come Home;
the boys, returning to a post-war milieu and patriotism, this time as vets adopting
a war refugee. Their second outing from this same year; The Wistful Widow of
Wagon Gap proved one of the most dissatisfying and problematic movies in
their cannon. For starters, its premise had everyone ganging up on Lou, more
elfin and child-like than ever. Even Bud gets his licks in, making it strangely
vindictive and distasteful. Second, the picture was responsible for taking a
genuine toll on Lou’s health. After several months of recuperation, Bud and Lou
came back with one of their best movies ever: 1947’s Abbott and Costello
Meet Frankenstein: an instant classic, co-starring Bela Lugosi (as Count
Dracula), Lon Chaney Jr. (as the 'Wolf Man') and Lenore Aubert as the sultry
Dr. Sandra Mornay in a plot centering on the good doctor attempting to
transplant Lou's brain into the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange). The movie
has since been voted by the AFI as one of the 100 greatest comedies of all
time.
In hindsight, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein relaunched
the A&C franchise and elevated the team’s sagging popularity back into the
top ten box office draws. Apart from 1948’s Mexican Hayride, a rather turgidly
scripted ‘south of the border’ romp, in which Lou must masquerade as a
famous bullfighter, and later, a Spanish senorita to escape desperadoes, the
remainder of A&C’s Universal outings would be spent combating ...The
Killer: Boris Karloff (1949), ...The Invisible Man (1951), ...Dr.
Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1953) and finally, ...The Mummy (1955). In
between these classic comedy/horror movies, Universal allowed the team to make
some featherweight comedies; each, valiantly trying to recapture the magic of their
earlier flights into screwball; Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion
(1950), Lost In Alaska (1952), …Go To Mars (1953) and …Meet
The Keystone Cops (1955). The singular highlight from these latter pictures
remains Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Interestingly, Boris
Karloff, who had turned down the plum offer to reprise his Frankenstein monster
in the most lucrative of A&C’s monster mashups, claiming “Abbott and
Costello ruined the monsters”, would trade on his popularity to co-star
with the boys in two of their more forgettable monster movies. But ‘…Meet
the Mummy’ is a delicious nod to the old A&C magic; Bud and Lou,
bumbling into the murder of a famed archaeologist and forced to submit to a
devious viper (played with impeccable venom by Marie Windsor), who is out to
discover the mummy of Clarice; unaware the two-hundred-year-old relic is still
very much alive and ready to exact its revenge on all who dare relocate its
sarcophagus.
While Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy was a big hit for
Universal, the studio was no longer interested in maintaining the team that,
for so many lean years during the war, had meant the difference between
operating in the black and teetering on the brink of foreclosure. In hindsight,
it’s probably just as well. This movie capped off Bud and Lou’s Universal movie
career on a very high note. Apart from one other, Dance, With Me Henry (1956),
made for United Artists, A&C confined the body of their later work to
television, before officially marking an end to one of the most successful
comedy acts in U.S. history. In 1965, Universal paid homage to the boys with ‘The
World of Abbott and Costello’ – a very loose assembly of some of their
funniest bits into a retrospective, narrated by Jack E. Leonard. Throughout the
mid-60's, as the old guard and studio system continued to crumble, it became
fashionable for studios to mine the legacy of their ‘old’ stars for nostalgia
and profit. Alas, The World of Abbott and Costello was not a moneymaker
for Universal. Nevertheless, the movies would find renewed interest with fans
on TV in the early 1970’s; edited for time constraints, interrupted by commercials
and shown early on Sunday mornings.
In the mid-1990’s Universal began producing Laserdisc sets of A&C’s
more popular movies: a ‘monster’ themed set in 1994, with a specially produced
‘Abbott and Costello meet The Monsters’ featurette; and later, another
compendium of their earliest comedies; this time with a preamble from noted TV
comedian, Jerry Seinfeld. With the advent of DVD, Universal inaugurated a more
comprehensive four part ‘franchise’ collection, each set containing six A&C
movies in chronological order; alas, released on the inferior DVD-18 flipper
disc format and not remastered. Then, in
2003, Universal reissued the A&C catalog yet again, this time as Abbott
and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection. Much to the
relief of fans, the fallible DVD-18’s were gone, replaced by the more reliable
DVD-9’s. Better still, Universal had elected to go back and remaster virtually
all of the titles for this deluxe reissue; albeit, some with more care and
attention paid than others. Now, we get Shout! Factory’s stab at the same
collection, with a few added goodies. There are six very comprehensive audio
commentaries from noted historians and authors on Buck Privates, Hold
that Ghost, Who Done It?, The Time of Their Lives, Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and, curiously, Abbott and Costello Meet
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; I say, ‘curiously’ because the latter was never
considered among the duo’s stellar accomplishments.
Several of these 1080p transfers received significant upgrades over the
old Universal ‘franchise’ releases at the time they were being prepped for DVD –
not Blu-ray - with Meet the Keystone Cops at long last being appropriately
framed in 1.85:1. Virtually every home video presentation has maintained a
cropped 1.33:1 aspect ratio. It should be noted, only the aforementioned title
and Meet the Mummy are presented in widescreen – as they should be. The
rest were originally shot for 1.33:1 and remain in this aspect ratio. On the
whole, and, on Blu-ray, the B&W images are impressive; the movies, housed
two per disc for a total of 15 discs. While compression is never an issue, I
find it rather skinflint of Shout! and Uni to have never given us separate
discs (1) per movie to maximize the bit rate. Perhaps Uni is running true to
form. Maxim Andrews always claimed working at Universal was ‘just awful’ – “They
never spent a dime more than they had to on any of our pictures and squeezed
every last red cent from the reissues. We didn’t even get a ‘thank you’.” As I pointed out earlier, certain movies fare better in image quality. The best of the lot exhibit razor-sharp clarity,
likely to have been sourced from properly managed archival materials. Here, we
get a very nicely contrasted gray scale with a solid smattering of indigenous
film grain reproduced without age-related artifacts. But a few of these features
have obviously been sourced from dupes rather than original camera negatives –
and look it too; In The Navy, in particular is soft, muddy and grainy. All
feature a DTS 1.0 mono soundtrack; consistency, again, uneven. While there are
generally no complaints, it’s worth noting that One Night in the Tropics’
audio is strident; ditto, for Meet the Killer.
In addition to the already amassed extras that were available on the Uni
discs, Shout! has shelled out for new audio commentaries on In The Navy,
Keep ‘Em Flying, The Naughty Nineties, Little Giant, Meet
the Killer, It Ain’t Hay, Hit the Ice, Ride ‘Em Cowboy
(which actually gets two separate commentaries), Mexican Hayride, and, Meet
The Mummy. On a separate disc, we the 1965 compendium feature, The World
of Abbott and Costello, plus the two superfluous featurettes that
accompanied Uni’s Laserdisc releases: Abbott and Costello meet Jerry
Seinfeld, and Abbott and Costello meet the Monsters. Perhaps the
best news of all is that Shout! has again put their money into some far more
comprehensive extras to augment this viewing experience: Abbott and
Costello: Their Lives and Legacy, is a wonderful featurette in which Lou’s
daughter, Chris, and author, Ron Palumbo dish about the boys’ longevity and
close working relationship. Palumbo also returns for a ‘Behind the Scenes’
– discussion about the various unseen collaborators on these pictures.
Historian, James L. Neibaur is featured in Abbott and Costello: Film Stories
– an intensive reflection with some good back stories to share. Behind the Scenes – Ron Palumbo talks about
the various writers and directors. Finally, there are several fascinating
anomalies to be had: eight, 8mm and 16mm shorts A&C made for Castle Films,
plus, some intriguing, and newly unearthed outtakes from Pardon My Sarong,
It Ain't Hay, Hit the Ice, Little Giant and Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein. Last, but not least, we get a trailer reel.
Bottom line: despite the varying quality of all this material, overall,
this is a superb representation of A&C’s Universal tenure and should be
considered the definitive Abbott and Costello movie experience. The movies made
apart from Universal are understandably – if regrettably – absent from this
set. Now, if we could only get Warner and MGM/Fox to give us the remaining
titles, still MIA in hi-def: chiefly the MGM pictures: Rio Rita, In
Hollywood, and, Lost in the Harem, and, for completionists, Jack and
the Beanstalk, Africa Screams, Meet Captain Kidd, and, Dance
With Me Henry. Okay, wishing doesn’t make it so and I sincerely will not be
holding my breath for these remaining MIA catalog titles any time soon. But Abbott
and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection from Shout! is a
superb offering not to be missed. Currently retailing for a scant $120 U.S., or
basically less than $4 a title, the value cannot be beat. This one belongs on
everyone’s top shelves this Christmas. Very highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
Overall Entertainment Value 5+ (priceless)
VIDEO/AUDIO
Overall 3.5
EXTRAS
5+
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