Lawrence Talbot: "You don't understand. Every night when the moon is full, I turn into a wolf."
Wilbur: "You and twenty million other guys!"
American horror-
comedy, released in
1948. Directed by
Charles Barton and written by
John Grant and
Robert Lees. Starred (surprise, surprise)
Bud Abbott and
Lou Costello as dim-witted delivery men
Chick Young and
Wilbur Grey. Other stars included
Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence Talbot (
the Wolf Man),
Bela Lugosi as
Dracula,
Glenn Strange as
Frankenstein's Monster,
Lénore Aubert as
Dr. Sandra Mornay, the lovely
Jane Randolph as
Joan Raymond, Insurance Investigator, and
Vincent Price, in a very hard-to-spot
cameo at the end of the
film.
Basically, Wilbur and Chick deliver the remains of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster to a "
House of Horrors"
museum, but the two
monsters awaken and escape.
Lawrence Talbot arrives with plans to thwart Dracula's evil plans, but his tendency to turn into a
werewolf at every
full moon makes him as much of a
threat as the other monsters. In the midst of all this, Dracula kidnaps Wilbur -- he plans to put Wilbur's
brain in the monster's body! The
fiend! Of course, by the end of the movie, all the monsters are loose, and all are chasing after our
intrepid heroes.
Believe it or not, this is actually a pretty good
movie. Lots of
Abbott and Costello's movies bit, but this one turned out pretty
funny. And lots of
horror spoofs put all their emphasis on
jokes, but this film manages some fairly
suspenseful moments -- not exactly
scary, but much more
tense than you'd expect for a movie where the
villain thinks Costello's brain would improve Frankenstein's Monster. I
recommend it fairly enthusiastically.
Interesting
trivia: Glenn Strange, who was playing Frankenstein's Monster, broke his
ankle during filming. Lon Chaney, Jr. didn't have any scenes as the Wolf Man that day, so he volunteered to wear the famous Frankenstein
makeup and
costume in one scene.
Chick: "You're making enough noise to wake up the dead!"
Wilbur: "I don't have to wake him up. He's up."
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)