Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Boris Karloff, Craig Stevens, Helen Westcott
Directed by Charles Lamont
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A pair of bumbling policemen in 19th century London are kicked off the force, and try to get their jobs back by catching the murdering monster on the loose, actually Dr. Jekyll's gruesome alter ego.
This entry in the "Abbott & Costello Meet The Monsters" series of films pulls its villain not from the Universal horror library, but the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story of good and evil, although there's not much of Stevenson's tale that makes it to the screen. Karloff is welcome as Jekyll, but isn't given the opportunity to give a layered performance to Hyde as well, with a stuntman (Eddie Parker, according to IMDB) in a grotesque mask, playing all the Hyde scenes as a mute brute in topcoat and hat. Most of the gags and routines for Abbott & Costello are ones we've seen before, and none really elicit any laughter on my part today, but the film is lively paced and the sets and costumes convincing of the period. I still had fun with it, even if it's not one of the better A & C monster outings.
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