Lou Costello was always the master of strangulated, speechless terror, so putting Abbott & Costello in a movie with the Wolfman, Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster was inspired. Getting Lon Chaney, Jr., Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange to play the Terror Trio was just icing on the cake. This time around Bud and Lou play Chick Young and Wilbur Gray, a pair of railroad baggage clerks in LaMiranda, Florida, who have to deliver two large crates to MacDougal's House of Horrors. Inside are Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, but of course they escape. To make things worse, Wilbur's beautiful girlfriend, Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert), is really a mad scientist who wants to put Wilbur's brain in the Monster. Fortunately, Lawrence Talbot (Chaney) has arrived from Europe on the trail of the monsters.
It is rather amazing how long this film goes with Wilbur being the only one to spot the monsters. The comedy in this movie is something of a departure for the comedy team, because it relies more on situational humor and not as much on the "Who's On First" word play. The scene pantomime scene with Lou on the Monster's lap is great, as is the final chase scene with the boys encountering one monster after another. "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" is the first and the best of the boy's comic team-ups, which does not deserve the reputation it has in some quarters for having made the Universal monsters creatures of ridicule. That might be true of later Abbott & Costello monster comedies, but the charge would be truer of "House of Dracula" than this film, which has the same respect for the monsters as does "Young Frankentstein." Trivia Note: While filming the scene where the Monster throws Sandra through the lab window, Strange was knocked over and broke his ankle. Chaney, who had played the Monster in "Ghost of Frankenstein," volunteered to step in and once again don the makeup and he is the one who re-shot the scene that appears in the movie.
