Cinema's Greatest Comedy Duo Turned a Horror-Comedy Mashup into a Boxing Flick
Abbott and Costello never met an Invisible Man they didn’t want to fight.
The comedy duo of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were no strangers to genre mashups. The pair led dozens of films in the '40s and '50s that let them deploy their mid-century patter inside of western, fantasy, safari, and showbiz genres. When Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein in 1948's aptly named Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, it was the start of a series of horror-comedies that built on what's arguably the first cinematic universe. So it wasn't really a surprise, 75 years ago, that Abbott and Costello met the Invisible Man. It is a little surprising that Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man is less of a horror comedy and more of a slapsticky sports flick.
While Abbott and Costello were doing original hijinks for the first decade of their filmography, Universal Pictures started having the duo cross over with some of the various titles they had the rights to. (Synergy!) None came alive as much as the first mashup with Frankenstein's Creature, and the '48 film also featured Dracula and the Wolf Man to boot. (The latter two were played by Bela Legosi and Lon Chaney Jr., reprising their original roles.) On their own, the monster movies were starting to run out of steam. Frankenstein had already fought the Wolf Man in 1943; having them cross paths again but this time with the comedy duo behind the iconic "Who's on First?" bit in on the action was a great way to revive the IP and continue Abbott and Costello's string of hits. It's legitimately funny (the American Film Institute put it on their list of the 100 funniest American comedies) and while it's not exactly scary, it does have the aesthetic of a classic Universal Monster picture.
At the end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, following the demises of the Wolf Man, Dracula, and the Creature, Abbott and Costello hear a greeting from an unseen figure, as Vincent Price's recognizable voice introduces himself as the Invisible Man. It's a killer stinger, but it would be four films until Abbott and Costello made good on the tease. (One of these movies, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, had them meet the original Creature actor, getting an ominous title billing as himself. It's not quite a classic Universal Monster mash like some of the other Abbott and Costello horror romps, but it's worth a mention.)
Vincent Price does not voice the Invisible Man in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, which premiered in theaters on March 14, 1951. The movie isn't a sequel to the Frankenstein film, instead having Abbott and Costello play new characters, Bud Alexander and Lou Francis, a pair of dimwitted rookie private detectives. Their first case is Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz), a middleweight boxer accused of killing his manager...but he's been framed, you see? Tommy goes to visit his fiancée and her uncle — a doctor who for some reason has access to the invisibility serum that the original Invisible Man, Jack Griffin — injected himself with. To avoid getting caught, Tommy becomes invisible, much to the befuddlement of Lou and Bud.
In the H.G. Welles story and James Whale's 1933 movie, Griffin's invisibility serum made him go insane. It's why the Invisible Man is considered a "monster" alongside the Wolf Man and Creature From the Black Lagoon. And while the see-through Tommy does threaten to break bad and occasionally act uninhibited, he's not a monster. He's arguably the movie's real protagonist, not the villain. The real baddie is Morgan (Sheldon Leonard), a crooked promoter who framed Tommy for his manager's murder after Tommy refused to throw a fight. Tommy enlists Lou and Bud to crack the case for him, a bit of mystery-solving that involves an unwilling Lou posing as a boxer himself and stepping into the ring opposite Morgan's fighter. Luckily for Lou, he's got an invisible Tommy in the ring with him doing all the punching and blocking. Lou becomes a boxing sensation because his punches are so fast that onlookers can't even see them. Slapstick ensues.
Abbott and Costello solve mysteries. And apparently box.
The special effects, done by the same guy who did some of the Invisible Man sequels, are impressive and make for silly gags — especially a lengthy bit where an unseen Tommy eats spaghetti at a restaurant while Lou and Bud scramble to make it look like they're the ones eating this floating food. On a plot level, though, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man seems less interested in the visibility of its titular character than in a boxing mob story. Boxing movies have always been a rich cinema subgenre, and this era was no exception. Movies about boxers who faced trouble for refusing to take a dive were common, and films like the Kirk Douglas-led Champion and John Wayne-led The Quiet Man were big Oscar players in 1949 and 1952, respectively. It's not the craziest thing in the world that Abbott and Costello would find themselves in the midst of a boxing flick, even if it is a little odd that they did so next to an Invisible Man.
Fans of classic horror who are looking for a laugh will find plenty of the latter in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (a sequence where Lou can't be hypnotized by a psychiatrist but he keeps accidentally putting the doctor and anybody else who comes in the room to sleep once he starts waving the pocketwatch around is a highlight.) Those fans might be a bit let down by how little the film feels like the vintage monster movies it's ostensibly a continuation of. If Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was a worthwhile entry in the Universal Classic monster canon, their meeting of the Invisible Man is more of a standard Abbott and Costello romp with a couple of weird genre twists. Still, there are far, far worse things than two of the funniest comedians ever to grace the silver screen doing their patter. And for those wanting a more monster-focused Abbott and Costello mashup? The duo met Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde two years later.
