After owning this film on DVD for over a decade I finally
got around to watching it and was surprised that it was enjoyable - not good
but also not as bad as I had assumed it was going to be. My expectations were
dialed very low because, in general, the combination of Bela Lugosi and comedy
is a sure sign that you're in for cinematic trouble. For me, all horror
comedies from this period pale in comparison to the all-time great ABBOT &
COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948) and so I generally expect the worst but hope
for the best. The level of humor in horror comedies of the 1940’s was usually
pitched at around the level of the broadest of vaudevillian stylings and that
never has translated well to the screen for me. Maybe because I've spent the
last year catching up with about a dozen previously unwatched Abbott and
Costello films, I've grown accustomed to the type of humor commonly found in
this decade and therefore I’m more easily amused by them than I would have been
in the past.
The old-fashioned joys of this film are the kinds of things
that more and more I find myself enjoying as I explore the lesser known efforts
of the comedy genre. One of the best elements is the cast with Bela Lugosi getting
to play it straight and, in the one scene in which he participates in some actual
physical comedy, he is perfect! It couldn’t have been easy to work with a monkey
that continues to appear and disappear in a chest of drawers but he actually is
spot-on in his timing, expressions and delivery. Plus, any movie in which I get
to see Sheldon Leonard playing a quick-to-anger gangster is worth my time. ZOMBIES
ON BROADWAY (1945) not a great movie but it's also not bad so I found myself
actually enjoying the film for its brief running time. It is far from a classic,
but it is a pretty interesting time waster for fans of the star and for
comedies of the period.
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