Description

Includes the following movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein Mexican Hayride Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man Comin' Round the Mountain Lost in Alaska ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Except for A&C Meet Frankenstein...these are bombs!
Universal has squished another 8 Abbott & Costello movies out on a 2 disc set that will obviously please the ardent fans, but these films (with one exception) are really AWFUL.

The only one worth any note here is A&C MEET FRANKENSTEIN which actually has a good script, and a clever way of intergrating Universal's horror franchise with their then-hugely popular comedy team. It's the only A&C film I can sit through (except for their earliest).

SKIP THIS DUD!

The best of Abbott & Costello Vol. 1
I have waited so long and now to have them released is fantastic. These are true comedy and can now be shown to my grandkids to experience a good laugh without swearing. Kudos to Universal for releasing these gems and hopefully more soon.

This DVD collection is a must - for any A&C Fans
I remember growing up watching old Abbott and Costello movies on Sunday afternoons with my Dad (along with the classic monster movies and the old Blondie shows). Buying these DVD's is like reliving great memories from my youth. The picture quality on these DVD's is outstanding - they are very well done. This third volume in this series is going to be the best of them all - this DVD will have some of my all time favorite A&C movies. I have watched the first two volumes numerous times since purchasing them and look forward to this next volume with great anticipation.

Worthy of More Than 5 Stars...
I just can't get enough of Abbott and Costello!

I waited for quite a few years for ANY Abbott and Costello movies to hit DVD. There were very few in print. It was frustrating.

Well, the wait paid off big time. The first two sets were incredible. Universal has gone the extra mile and these sets are winners on so many levels.

Each set thus far includes 8 HIGH QUALITY films for under $20!

When I say HIGH QUALITY, I'm not just talking about the quality of the prints, which is very high, but the movies themselves are not lost turkeys. These are the truly all classics, and this set includes some of the great Universal Monster tie-ins, which were previously sold individually for more than the price of this set of 8!

Based upon the track record for classic movies going out of print, I suggest you buy them while they are still in this format.

keep em coming!
This is what offering a great value is all about! I've got vol. 1 & 2 already and this one on order. This will be one of my favs for sure! 8 movies, fantastic quality, all for under $20!!! Man, the CD music industry needs to stand up and take notice of what's happening in the DVD industry. This is one of many great collections that have/are coming out. The Universal Monsters, The Marx Brothers, Don Knotts and several other collections all reasonably priced. You can't even rent movies this cheap. Vol 1 & 2 of this series are stellar for quality and the packaging is top notch and very convenient, they take up very little space in a storage unit. I'm not sure how many movies are left to release after this but if there's enough to do another vol 4 please do so! Thanks a million Universal Studios! ... Read more

Amazon.com

After 15 years of hit movies for Universal Studios, Bud Abbott and LouCostello left the studio in the twilight of their partnership with the last oftheir monster comedies. Decked out in desert safari gear, the boys go lookingfor a job with an Egyptologist and wind up in the middle of a conspiracyconcerning the murdered professor, an ancient mummy, and a magical medallionthat, true to form, bumbling Costello manages to eat for dinner. Marie Windsor,the boss lady of a gang of treasure hunting crooks, dresses in a harem outfit tovamp for our chubby little hero, and the eternally stiff Richard Deaconhilariously plays the leader of an Egyptian mummy cult like a high schoolprincipal decked out for Halloween. Directed by longtime collaborator CharlesLamont, it's a typical Abbott and Costello farce with disappearing corpses,mistaken identities, and wacky word plays ("Take your pick" riffs on "Who's onfirst" with garden tools). While not as clever or spirited as their originalmonster mash Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the vaudevilleveterans are still masters of the double take and fast-talk patter, and thepicture climaxes with a screwball chase that involves not one, not two, butthree mummies skittering through the phoniest looking pyramid this side ofcommunity theater. You were expecting realism? The boys appeared together oncemore on film, in Dance with Me, Henry, and then split up. --SeanAxmaker ... Read more

Reviews (13)

After All
Name any other mummy in any other mummy show who is that nimble and has loose bandages half coming undone, who takes your hand when you put it out to him. Or Marie Windsor in a harem suit at Dr. Zoomer's house chasing Lou around. Or Bud wondering if a lost tie clasp was showing up on the x-ray of Lou's stomach. Name a more pitiful hole ever dug in the history of movies.[about 2 feet deep to bury TWO mummies.] Or Bud just happening to find a bag of bandages so he could be a mummy too. Just watching Marie wheel her horse around [she was a champion rider who was able to run and mount a horse from behind like the Lone Ranger, the only actress able to do that.] is a pleasure. This may be the best movie ever made....just trashes Citizen Kane. I have it tied with 'Dr. Strangelove' and 'The Apostle' as the three best movies ever made. Pure Poetry, every minute.

Yikes! The comedy is kept under wraps here...
The Abbott and Costello films fit into one of two categories; really good or really bad. Sadly, this film sits in the later camp. I'm not sure what the screenwriters and Bud & Lou were thinking when they concocted this strange mishmash of bad comedy and bad horror. The Universal Mummy films were always the weakest of their horror films (the exception is the eerie but really slowwwwww first film with Boris Karloff. It's only alive in the very beginning).

I'd suggest sticking with the first and best of this bunch A&C Meet Frankenstein. All the later films (including Dr. Jekell & Mr. Hyde)are little more than pale imitations.

Any A&C film is only as good as their routines. This one, sadly, doesn't have very inspired ones. The best involving the tools is a pale imitation of the who's on first variety. They don't make them like this anymore (on second thought....what about all those Halloween and Friday The 13th sequels? They're not comedies? What?)

Best of the "meet the monsters" series
Fans of the original Mummy movie featuring Kharis the mummy, The Mummy's Hand (not to be confused with Boris Karloff's radically different and unrelated 1932 film titled "The Mummy") could have seen this movie coming. The original film that introduced Kharis is somewhat in the same vein as Abbott & Costello as far as story and characterization are concerned. In fact, the original duo cast in the Mummy's Hand are similar to and could have been better cast as Abbott & Costello.

In a sense, this movie brings Kharis full circle long after the demise of Ananka in his own movies, he finally meets his end here in a slightly more humorous picture than his first. However, the similarities between the two could almost make this the final instalment in the canon, other than out of continuity (like Abbott & Costello's other "meet the monster" movies).

My only complaint with this DVD is that it did not have a great commentary like Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein. But it's still a great DVD, and the sight of the two charicatures running madly accross the main menu is enough entertainment (yes, i can be simple-minded, but then again it is Abbott & Costello i'm talking about).

Abbott & Costello, sadly, did not go on to make any more pictures after this one, but this is still some of their greatest material. So in two ways, this movie has a sense of finality: the last Kharis movie, and the last Abbott & Costello movie. It should also be a must-have in the collection of any fan of either.

My favorite A&C movie.
Saw these and liked them as a kid in the 1950's. My kinds don't care for them. This is the one i liked the best.

Who Cares About Behind-The-Scenes Grumbling?
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY was one of the funniest of their screwball antics. The tale of the two cleverest yucksters chasing a medallion to an ancient Egyptian crypt where they encounter -- as the title promises -- the Mummy is one classic set of laughs after another. All of the trades touched on the bitterness the two men felt for one another during the filming process of this outing, but, with all the magic of their performances still on the silver screen, you sure wouldn't know it. A great transfer for a classic addition to any DVD library, this is one for the ages. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The only thing missing is Asta
THE LADY IN SCARLET stars Reginald Denny as playboy slash private eye Oliver Keith and Patricia Farr as girl Friday slash Saturday night fallback Ella Carey. The dvd jacket blurb coyly calls this a "thriller reminiscent of THE THIN MAN." They're being much too modest. For all the filching the makers of this movie did they might have well called it The Purloined Leitmotif. It's probably a coincidence that Barbara Stanwyck's THE WOMAN IN RED was released shortly before THE LADY IN SCARLET. It would be terrible if audiences got the two confused. Well, as the old saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery -- but just try telling that to a copyright lawyer.
Still, you have to hand it to them. The film makers were able to write what would have been a decent first draft for a real Thin Man movie, find credible stand-ins for William Powell and Myrna Loy, and deliver it to theaters in less than a year.
Old man Albert Sayres and young and beautiful trophy wife Julia are a bit on the outs. Antiques dealer Sayres is jealous of any man who looks at his bride, and goes as far as hiring a private eye to tail her and catch her in a comprising situation. Sayres is murdered before Denny's Keith has had a chance to down his third cocktail. Being an old friend of Julia Sayres, he is soon in the middle of the investigation. What follows is an effective little plot involving a disputed will, a clutch of believable suspects and some delightfully unexpected light comedic moments.
To its advantage, THE LADY IN SCARLET also appropriated THE THIN MAN'S relaxed, wise-cracking ambiance. Oliver's and Ella's repartee may lack the charm and sparkle of Nick and Nora's banterings, but that's probably the fault of an inferior script and a rushed production schedule. It's a pleasure to see one of these old Poverty Row products and not feel like the actors are auditioning for the part of cigar store indians.
If you're a fan of the Thin Man series and are in the mood of a variation on the theme, THE LADY IN SCARLET is your ticket. ... Read more

Description

After their star fighters run out on them, two wrestling promoters are tricked into joining the Foreign Legion, where they foul up basic training, dodge desert cutthroats and chase pretty slave girls. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN THE FOREIGN LEGION!
LAUGH your heads off as Bud and Lou end up in the French Foreign Legion! SEE Walter Slezak as the tough sergeant who has to whip these two comic misfits into fighting shape! WATCH as the desert sun beats down unmercifully on them all! DROOL over the dancing slave girls! AVOID the camels at all cost! Can you trust your eyes during the comic WRESTLING sequence or is it all a MIRAGE!

Abbott and Costello take to the desert--or is that a mirage?
This time around Abbott and Costello are wrestling promoters Bud Jones and Lou Hotchkiss. Their star, Abdullah (Wee Willlie Davis), refuses to loose when they tell him to and he returns home to Algeria. The boys have to go after Abdullah and bring him back because they borrowed $5,000 from the syndicate to bring him to America in the first place. However, Abdullah's cousing, Sheik Hamud El Khalid (Douglas Dumbrille) and the evil Foreign Legionnaire Sgt. Axmann (Walter Slezak), have been raiding the railroad being constructed so they can get rich extorting money for protection. The bad guys assume Bud and Lou are spies for the railroad and order them killed. Lou has also upset the Sheik by outbidding him on six beautiful slave girls, including Nicole (Patricia Medina), a French spy. Anyhow, the boys end up enlisting in the Foreing Legion, narrowly avert death several times, and end up saving the day with ample help from Abdullah and Nicole.

This 1950 film, directed by Charles Lamont, was the 25th film featuring Abbott & Costello, then in their 15th year as a comedy team. The film suffers somewhat in comparison to Laurel & Hardy's 1939 classic "The Flying Deuces," but there are enough laughs in this one to make "Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion" at least an average comedy by the boys. Of course, to be fair, Costello had faced a pair of serious illnesses, rheumatic fever and a gangrenous gall bladder, in the months before this film was produced. The wrestling sequence remains the comic highlight of the film, along with the mirages the boys encounter in the desert. The bit between Lou and the Commandant where the word play of "we"/"oui" is merely cute. Still, this movie is arguably the second best Foreign Legion comedy of all time, for what that is worth.

THIS TIME THE TEAM WREAKS CHAOS IN THE FORIEGN LEGION
This basic Abbott and Costello comedy is a fast paced adventure about Abbott and Costello as wrestling promoters. When I first watched this I thought it wouldn't be as funny as the teams other outings but then I was wrong. I noticed that Abbott and Costello do the same old same old though but never the less the team does pull through.

BEWARE WATCH OUT

For the teams most funniest routines.

Pleasant
This is a great A&C movie.There are a great many big laughs.These include The Mirage Scene and the big fish scene.There is also a good scene with lou kissing the arab girls.You wont be disappointed.

Why Put Spmething on DVD Without Extras?
I am a big fan of Abbott and Costello, but this title is not one of their best films. Later this summer the superior ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is slated for DVD release, and I hope it is a better reproduction. What is the point of releasing these old titles on DVD if there are no extras? MCA/Universal is very bad at this. At least the old box set laser discs of A&C films had the trailers included. A complete filmography would be nice. Another reviewer mentioned this release was supposed to be in widescreen, but that is doubtful because it was not a widescreen film when it was released in theatres almost 50 years ago. MCA/Universal, though, is notorious for being cavalier with their video releases and making mistakes. Read the liner notes put out by the studio for this title, and you'll see that they misdescribe events and get character names wrong. They also identify a fish as a crab! Abbott and Costello may have been low budget but their pertformances and routines were quality. Their films made a lot of money for the studio when the studio needed it, and I would expect the studio to have greater respect for the boys. ... Read more