FRANKENSTEIN, THE VAMPIRE AND CO (1962)

Comedy is the most difficult film genre to recommend to anyone else. Just because something makes you laugh doesn't necessarily mean that it will make anyone else in the world laugh. This is certainly true of older movies which makes it very difficult to recommend that a modern audience watch an older comedy film. But there are a handful of older comedies that I think can be safely recommended to most younger viewers as long as they are curious.

One of them – and indeed, one of the best comedies of all time - is ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948). It is an amazing movie and still funny to this day. What makes this even more impressive is that one of the most difficult things to pull off is the combination of horror AND comedy. This movie pulls it off with near perfection making it a fine addition to the comedic genre as well as an excellent part of the monster rally series it caps. It serves as the final entry in the Universal horror series that stretched from 1931 to 1948 as well as one of the finest of Abbot and Costello’s cinema adventures. It regularly ends up on favorite and best of lists for the genre no matter who you’re quizzing as long as their parameters are not restricted by date of production or a prejudice against black & white.  I've seen youngsters of almost every age fall in love with this very funny film. It walks a tight wire act of treating its monsters seriously while being loose enough let the famed comedy team generate a lot of genuine laughs.

A few years ago, I learned that there was a Mexican film that was an incredibly close intentional remake of this Hollywood classic. I, of course, knew that I would have to see it just out of curiosity if for no other reason. I have now done so and I have to say it was a mildly painful experience.

FRANKENSTEIN, THE VAMPIRE AND CO (1962) is the title of this loose remake. It tries to repeat the things that work in the original but makes several mistakes. Instead of a comedy duo the humor is presented in the performance of Manuel 'Loco' Valdés who seems to be inserting a previously established comedic personality into the story. His humor seems to be built on some silly voices and noises and an odd hopping movement that is supposed to indicate anxiety. Add to these very unfunny antics the repeated choice to have Valdés face the camera while his ‘prankster’ ideas are related in a voiceover and you have a comedian who is just not very amusing – for me. Perhaps he was funny as hell in 1962 for a younger Mexican audience but I have no way to know.

Regardless, I was not amused which left me with only the monster elements to be potentially entertained by. Sadly, this was a letdown as well. The werewolf makeup was a pretty bad pull-over and probably store-bought mask while the Dracula surrogate is just a guy arching his eyebrows running around in a cape. The Frankenstein monster was less embarrassing but still poorly made-up and nearly a non-entity in this silly mess. The film does vaguely follow the outline of the movie it’s copying but I found it difficult to care after about the halfway mark. It was interesting to see this bizarre piece of cinema but I can’t imagine ever watching it again or recommending it to others. If you are curious to see a film that you love being replicated in another country on a much smaller budget then it’s worth seeing. Who knows – there may be a large contingent of Universal horror fans out there that enjoy this movie. If you’ve seen this and liked it, please let me know.