Monster March: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

Despite having met an invisible man (Vincent Price) in the final frames of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello continued their monster spoofs with an invisible man all their own three years later, in a film that could only be titled Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man. Like most of Universal’s Invisible Man franchise, this Meet is a hodgepodge of genres designed to be a life support machine for special effects sequences – and it’s not the comedy duo’s finest hour, either.

Newly graduated from detective school, Bud Alexander and Lou Francis (Abbott and Costello) strike out on their own, but to their bad luck the first case is that of accused murderer and boxer Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz). Tommy hires the newly-minted detectives before shooting up with the Griffin invisibility serum in hopes of clearing his own name. Bud and Lou have to dodge mobsters and Detective Roberts (William Frawley) until a series of zany shenanigans puts Lou in the boxing ring himself as “Louie the Looper.”

 

After all that Monster March has thrown our way, I’ve come to expect the unexpected from an Invisible Man film. The film begins as a kind of detective noir parody, which suits me just fine – I’d had occasion a few nights earlier to rewatch The Maltese Falcon for the umpteenth time, and it seemed to me that Abbott and Costello were about to add a dose of monster mischief to the noir formula. With the addition of gangsters, however, we verge into Some Like It Hot territory (though Meets predates Hot by eight years), but before long we’re in a full-on boxing picture. (Barton Fink, eat your heart out.) If anyone had “underdog sports movie” in your Universal Monsters bingo, mark that square – the rest of us are stunned.

 

In the way that most of the latter-day Universal Monsters movies are retreads of previous iterations of the same story, this Invisible Man bears more than a few similarities to The Invisible Man Returns (1940), which starred Vincent Price in a mystery about an invisible man proving his innocence. Indeed, several of the special effects shots from that film – like the disappearing guinea pig and the Invisible Man traipsing through the woods – have been repurposed and recycled here. Audiences at the time might not have recognized the scenes eleven years later, but I suppose that’s why God invented critics like me. Then again, audiences certainly should have recognized the fact that a photograph of Claude Rains hangs prominently in this film’s laboratory; I certainly did, and it was akin to spotting a Stan Lee cameo in a Marvel film, the kind of throwback reference I’ve wanted from these films all along. It’s surprising that it took until 1948 for the franchise to stop taking itself so seriously and start to wink at the audience.

 

Three years may not seem like a long time, but it must have been for Abbott and Costello. The idea of casting the 54-year-old Abbott and 45-year-old Costello as greenhorn detectives is frankly preposterous without assuming that these are two men in a midlife crisis looking for their career’s second act. It’s such a struggle that the two have to be pitted against an endearingly aggravated William Frawley, ten years their senior, to make them look young and goofy. Their comedy is a bit slower, too – though when it’s fast, it’s fun, as when they trot out an old vaudeville sleight-of-hand gag passing dollar bills from hand to hand. On the whole, however, many of the gags stretch out a little too long, as in an extended sequence in which Costello struggles to order food and eat it without the intervention of invisible man Tommy Nelson.

 

This is to say nothing of the film’s third act, which becomes almost entirely a boxing picture. As one who isn’t quite a connoisseur myself, I can’t say whether this plays better for someone who likes boxing movies, but for me I found it unsurprising and dull. At first, it seems a clever premise, watching Costello swing at his opponent while the invisible man does all the heavy hitting, but then it keeps going, and going, and going. By the time the fight ends – as inevitably you might expect it to end – the gag has long since stopped being funny, if ever it actually was. Then follows a kind of epilogue, a coda in which a blood transfusion accidentally renders Costello invisible; it’s the sort of joke you might expect more of the movie to engage, since Meet Frankenstein made Costello’s brain pivotal to the Monster’s plot. Here, though, it’s a throwaway gag or two, riffing on the “invisibility=nudity” punchlines of Invisible Woman. 

 

By the time you get to the epilogue, one feels as though the writers – and there are an astonishing five of them – have run out of ways to thread the jokes together, resorting instead to coupling them like train cars. (To say nothing of how the invisibility effects are noticeably poorer, as if the budget had well and truly run dry.) The comedic fruit of Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man is low-hanging, and the script plucks it all in the hopes that some of it won’t be rotten. To be fair, this Invisible Man isn’t rotten, but it’s a far cry from the timeless comedic genius of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Like most Invisible Man movies, though, this one just doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. 

Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man is not rated. Directed by Charles Lamont. Written by Hugh Wedlock Jr., Howard Snyder, Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, and John Grant. Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Arthur Franz, Nancy Guild, Gavin Muir, Sheldon Leonard, and William Frawley. 

Tune in tomorrow for Mummy Monday, with The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Next week for Silly Sunday, we’ll wrap things up when Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1954), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and Eddie Parker.

Raging Bull (1980)

Move Raging Bull off of the "I can't believe I've never seen this" list and onto the "great American classics" list.

Martin Scorsese's "rebirth" picture, made at a tumultuous time in the film icon's life, is a biopic about boxer Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro) on his way to a title challenge. Raging Bull follows Jake from his first fights to his later years of ignominy as a nightclub performer, but the film spends less time in the ring and more time examining the ways in which Jake's paranoia ends up dismantling his relationships with his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his gorgeous second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty).

Raging Bull is many things at once - a feat that many films reviewed on this blog have tried and failed - but the most significant thing that it is not what a first-time audience expects. I had assumed I was in for standard biopic fare, a rise and fall story on a par with pretty much everything else Scorsese has done (and done well); imagine my surprise when boxing scenes take up very little of the film's runtime and lets the focus linger on Jake's private life - a move that makes an interesting statement about what makes a life significant. It is our relationships, Scorsese suggests, that define us, and consequently it is our own nature that determines how our relationships are to progress.

Raging Bull is dominated by absolutely gorgeous and breathtaking cinematography on Scorsese's part. While every Scorsese picture reviewed herein on this blog has earned high marks for aesthetics, the decision to film Raging Bull in black-and-white almost makes (as distinct from "breaks") the movie. The subconscious associations with nostalgia, the past, and moral absolutism - as well as the accompanying paranoia that befalls La Motta - create an ironically vibrant atmosphere amid the grayscale visuals on the screen.

This is due also in large part to DeNiro's stellar central performance. I think DeNiro - like Al Pacino, who's often connoted with him - has a tendency to phone in performances; there's nothing particularly stellar about his work in Meet the Parents or Jackie Brown, but he's earned a certain "DeNiro credit" for past services rendered. So if you're wondering why DeNiro is considered a top actor, look no further than Raging Bull, in which DeNiro plays a range of emotions and personality traits within one very complex yet fully plausible figure. All this is to say nothing of the sheer physical tranformation exhibited on the screen; no fat suits here - the extra pounds DeNiro carries as an older, doughier Jake La Motta are the genuine article. Featured co-lead Pesci (here in one of his earliest roles) does a solid job as the film's second banana, evoking lifelike chemistry with DeNiro and demonstrating his ability to be restrained rather than consistently over-the-top (as in Goodfellas and Casino). Moriarty kind of floats through this one, never misstepping but merely existing for the purpose of coming between Jake and Joey; she's pretty, which is all the script asks of her, but she doesn't have enough of a presence to ever take the spotlight away from DeNiro and Pesci - which is, of course, a good thing.

Like Casino, Raging Bull isn't exactly the kind of movie about which I can immediately gush after seeing it. In fact, the movie is unsettling in a lot of places: La Motta's fall from fame is heartbreaking, and his brief stint in prison is so violently uncomfortable that it's difficult not to look away (the latter being a perfect example of Scorsese's gift at knowing when not to cut a scene). It's also not straightforward (also a good thing), deftly avoiding cliches that in 1980 hadn't even been invented yet and thereby remaining freshly original. Though it's not a comfortable film, it's a viciously well-made one, representing the apex of the creative partnership betwixt Scorsese and DeNiro - two American filmmakers doing some of their finest work.

Raging Bull wouldn't be a Scorsese movie if it weren't rated R, this time ffor some very strong brutal violence - most of it set in the boxing ring - as well as about 100 F-bombs and occasional moderate sexual dialogue. One of Scorsese's tamer movies, but it's got its moments.