The
huge box office success of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
inspired a string of similar films in which the comedy duo met a variety
of monsters, supernatural, scientific and human. In this one, they meet
Boris Karloff who had declined to return as the Frankenstein monster
for the earlier film. Again thanks to the vagaries of the eccentric
titling of the Abbott and Costello Meet... films, Karloff is often cited
as being the eponymous killer, the title card reading Bud Abbott Lou
Costello Meet the Killer and being followed by another card bearing
Karloff's name, leading to many to insist that the title of the film is
really Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff. It isn't,
and nor is Karloff the killer. For brevity's sake, Abbott and Costello
Meet the Killer is used here.
Criminal attorney Amos Strickland
(Nicholas Joy) checks into the Lost Caverns Resort Hotel where he's
murdered, his body found by bellboy Freddie Phillips (Costello). While
Inspector Wellman (James Flavin) and Sergeant Stone (Mikel Conrad)
believe the dim-witted Phillips to be the killer, house detective Casey
Edwards (Abbott) is less sure and tries to clear his name. Also at the
resort are Strickland's secretary Gregory Millford (Morgan Farley) and
seven of his wealthy clients - Swami Talpur (Karloff), Angela Gordon
(Lenore Aubert), Mrs Hargreave (Victoria Horne), T. Hanley Brooks
(Roland Winters), Lawrence Crandall (Harry Hayden), Mrs Grimsby (Claire
Du Brey) and Mike Relia (Vincent Renno). Together, they decide to
conceal their shady pasts (they all bring with them dark secrets) and
let Freddie take the rap, tricking him into signing a confession. Angela
tries to seduce him, the Swami tries to hypnotize him into committing
suicide and Relia and Millford both turn up dead in his closet. Several
attempts are made on Freddie's life until the killer is finally revealed
- and as noted, it certainly isn't Karloff...
Without the
classic monsters, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer is more of a
standard murder mystery thriller, a sort of "old dark hotel" film with
only a few macabre touches here and there, like Talpur's hypnotism and a
surprisingly high body count (the comedy is often very black indeed),
to spice things up. Producer Robert Arthur later noted that Costello had
always wanted to do a comedy detective story (though he'd clearly
forgotten that they'd already done one, Who Done It (1942)) which
suggested that both men thought this was right vehicle for the job. It
was originally a script titled Easy Does It which had been written with
Bob Hope in mind, and that in itself might have made for a funnier film.
As it stands, the film relies more on the clowning of Abbott and
Costello than did Meet Frankenstein, which also had some very creditable
monster action, and for those of us who never really warmed to the
duo's repetitive, knockabout comedy, this is a far less enjoyable
experience.
Unfortunately, by this stage, there was a tiredness
to Abbott and Costello's routines - they'd been together since 1936, and
a steady stream of stage, radio and film appearances (they later moved
into television) meant that the limited possibilities offered by their
partnership had largely all been used up. They'd nearly split up in
1945, egos clashing over pay and billing disputes, and although Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein had perked up their careers, their best
days were behind them - there's nothing here or in any of the "meet the
monsters" films of the calibre of the classic "Who's on First" routine
and their regular writer, John Grant, looked like he was running out of
ideas. The scene where Freddie keeps trying to show Edwards a dead body
which in turn keeps disappearing, is a retread of a routine they first
used in another spooky comedy, Hold That Ghost in 1941. There is one
very amusing bit of business here with Freddie being plied with huge
amounts of exotic alcohol when Edwards and the cops think he's been
poisoned by Angela, which gives Costello a nice little showcase for his
physical comedy, but the rest does little more than raise the occasional
smile.
Karloff of course gets to do most of the spooky stuff as
"that fake swami from Brooklyn" and he does it well. Repeated claims
that he was simply "phoning it in" are unfair. He gets a suitably
macabre scene - which may be in questionable taste these days - in which
he tries to force Freddie to kill himself using his hypnotic powers,
only to be thwarted at every turn by his intended victim's stupidity and
ineptitude. Karloff only joined the cast five days before shooting
began (his part was originally written as a woman in early drafts) but
seems to be having fun, relishing lines like "Perhaps you should choose
the manner of your death. How would you like to die?" and "You're going
to commit suicide if it's the last thing you do..."
Abbott and
Costello Meet the Killer didn't make anywhere near as much money as the
block-busting Meet Frankenstein, but it still made enough to keep
Universal happy and ensured that Abbott and Costello's film career would
continue. Meet the Killer is, at best, an OK comedy that flags in the
final act thanks to a pointless detour to some caves for a bit more
spooky silliness. It marked the start of a steady decline in the "meet
the monsters" films that continued with Meet the Invisible Man (1951),
Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1953) and Meet the Mummy (1955).
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