Furthermore, the Abbott and Costello monster films are an ideal mannequin to revive. Beginning with Meet Frankenstein in 1948 and persevering with by Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Meet the Invisible Man (1951), and Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), the movies adopted a foolproof components, teaming the comedians with Common Monsters.
The primary act would introduce the duo and set up the operating bits—for instance, in Meet Frankenstein, Costello has a fantastic girlfriend which befuddles the straight man Abbott—and introduce the characters’ jobs. These jobs carry the characters into the orbit of the monsters, as when the supply drivers performed by Abbott and Costello obtain crates containing Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monsters, and entangle all of them collectively. From there, nonetheless, the film performs as each an easy horror film and an easy comedy.
As that description suggests, Meet Frankenstein and its successors perceive some extent too usually misplaced by fashionable horror comedies. The place too many horror comedies use the comedy to undercut the horror or go so laborious into the horror that the jokes get misplaced, the Meet films work hold the 2 genres kind of separate, with out forcing one to be subordinate to the opposite. When Dracula hypnotizes Costello’s character in Meet Frankenstein, he’s simply as frozen as anybody who meets Lugosi’s gaze. However when Abbott wakes him up, the 2 instantly go into one in every of their well-tuned argument routines.
In fact, it helps that Abbott and Costello come to their movies with a longtime comedy persona. Which can be true of Kenan & Kel. If Kenan & Kel Meet Frankenstein can let Kel play a maniac and Kenan play his befuddled pal alongside an ordinary film a couple of reanimated corpse, then they will match the magic of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, bringing the traditional into fashionable instances.
