Michael_Elliott
Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) *** (out of 4) Bud Abbott and Lou Costello play characters who have just graduated from a detective school when they get their first case. It turns out that boxer Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz) is running from the law after being accused of killing his manager. A doctor he knows creates a formula that turns him invisible, which he uses to try and find the real killer of his manager with Bud and Lou along for the ride.After the success of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, Universal teamed their comedy duo up with several of their most famous monsters and one really could argue that this here was the duos last really good movie. While there are certainly a few gags here borrowed from previous movies, this one really does come across as being funny and fresh. It also offers up some very good special effects that will appeal to those fans of the Universal horror series.The best thing going for this film is that it actually gives you a fairly good and simple story that has plenty for the comic duo to do. There's a great sequence where the boys are given five-hundred-dollars and Costello keeps trying to take some of the money from Abbott. There's a great sequence where Lou is inside a gangster's girlfriend apartment trying to score some evidence. The highlight of the film has to be once Lou is in the ring and the invisible man must help him box. Of course, this one also benefits from us getting to see Abbott take some of the abuse.The special effects are certainly worth talking about as they look downright great. Universal's "Invisible" series had effects that would get better with time but they're quite impressive here and especially the scenes with the invisible man eating spaghetti. Both Bud and Lou are in fine form here as both men seem fresh and full of energy. The supporting cast is quite good as well. Overall, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN is a very good "B" movie and one of the last good films from the comedy legends.
mark.waltz
Although this Abbott and Costello film has its share of laughs, I really wish that it had more of the horrors that many of their late 1940s, early 1950s films had. The Invisible Man had made a brief cameo with the voice of Vincent Price in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but here, it is character actor Arthur Franz who takes on the role of the Invisible Man. He is a boxer who is in hiding for an apparent murder he committed, and it is up two private detectives Bud and Lou to try and prove his innocence. They have to go up against wisecracking police investigator William Frawley and obvious mobster Sheldon Leonard in order to do so, and with Franz appearing in and out of the film, for some reason Lou ends up in the boxing ring and a fight with he is supposed to take a dive ends up being the comic highlight of the film. However for me the funniest moment comes when Bud and Lou do a routine with money where Lou cleverly pocketing it after Bud insists that he gets it all. It is nice to see Lou getting the upper hand on bud, one of the rare times where he was able to do so. Unfortunately a lot of the film involves juvenile humor. By this time in the aging team was getting a bit old. Certainly, this team did have the longest running pairing in Hollywood history, lasting well over a decade. But other than a few truly original comic bits, this is a trip down the same road and unfortunately it lacks in originality.
lugonian
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (Universal-International, 1951), directed by Charles Lamont, continues the tradition with the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meeting up with someone and taking it from there in regards to story, situations and comedy. Following their enormous success where Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein (1948), along with Dracula and the Wolf Man from that same movie, it seemed natural that they should eventually get to meet up with past Universal monsters. While meeting "The Mummy" came later, much later, 1955 to be exact, the team followed their Frankenstein encounter with a worthy follow-up meeting with an Invisible Man three years later. Not actually a monster nor a mad scientist, and with no actors from previous efforts reprising their roles, it involves a prizefighter accused of murder using a remedy that makes him invisible in order to clear his name.As for the plot, the scenario opens quite amusingly as Bud Alexander (Bud Abbott) and Lou Francis (Lou Costello) are introduced as 1951 class graduates from the Dugan Detective Training School (Lou: "This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. How did I ever graduate?" Bud: "I slipped the instructor twenty bucks"). No sooner after setting up their own detective agency, Bud and Lou (the latter sporting Sherlock Holmes hat and smoking pipe) acquire their first client, Tommy Nelson (Arthur Franz), a middleweight champion boxer wanted for the murder of his manager, O'Hara. Having just escaped jail, he wants to clear himself of the murder charge. Instead of getting Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Tommy gets the next best thing in regards to amateur detectives. However, it is Lou who believes Tommy innocent while Bud makes every effort to collect $5,000 reward for his capture. Tommy has Bud and Lou drive him to 823 Maple Street, the residence of Helen Gray (Nancy Guild), his fiancée, and Dr. Philip Gray (Gavin Muir), her scientist uncle working on a serum for invisibility which was passed over to him by the original invisible man, John Griffin (Claude Rains, whose photo is seen hanging on the wall). When Detective Roberts (William Frawley) and the police arrive with a search warrant, Tommy injects himself with the serum, whose disappearance into thin air being witnessed by none other than Lou himself. When asked how Tommy got away, Lou replies, "In installments." Because his story is so unbelievable, Lou is taken to Dr. James C. Turner (Paul Maxey), a psychiatrist, to be analyzed. As Bud and Lou team up to assist the invisible man, Tommy has Lou posing as champion boxer "Louie the Looper" while Bud acts as his manager, in order to learn whether or not mobster Morgan (Sheldon Leonard) and Boots Marsden (Adele Jergens) had anything to do O'Hara's murder.Released at the time during their declining years at Universal's top comics, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET INVISIBLE MAN is not only a pleasant surprise, but one of the team's finer efforts of the 1950s. What's even more surprising is seeing how Costello, still playing a dopey guy, at one point stepping out of character by seriously punching out one of the bad guys for throwing a knife on Tommy. Aside from the team's well written verbal byplay and some in-jokes (Lou looking through his magnifying glass and getting a close-up on Tommy Nelson's face, telling Bud he saw Frankenstein), the gags involving invisibility work quite well with the story, thanks to David Horsley in the special effects department. Great comical moments find Lou in the Bubble Room restaurant attempting to eat his spaghetti dinner while strings of it end up over the direction of his transparent client; Boots convincing Lou to "take a dive" through her love making; and the highlight set in the boxing ring where Lou's punches never hitting his opponent, Rocky Hanlon (John Day), but by an invisible fist of Tommy Nelson. This scene is well staged and quite amusing. The only debit in general is where Lou finds himself walking the wrong way because his feet are on backwards. Don't ask.Unlike the last installment, THE INVISIBLE MAN'S REVENGE (1944), this edition is actually consistent with both THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) and THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS (1940), in fact, a partial remake to the 1940 sequel involving an innocent man (Vincent Price) becoming invisible to clear his name with the help of a scientist but minus the assistance of a couple goofy detectives.Distributed on video cassette by MCA Home Video in the 1990s, and later on DVD a decade later, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET INVISIBLE MAN had its share of cable TV revivals, notably on the Comedy Channel (1990s), American Movie Classics (2001-2002) and Turner Classic Movies (2004-2005). Though a worthy conclusion to "The Invisible Man" series, this is not the finish of Abbott and Costello meeting somebody, something or just simply anybody. Their next horror spoof was them meeting "Jekyll and Hyde" (1954) featuring Boris Karloff. While Abbott and Costello were recently failing to recapture their success from the early 1940s due to weak and tired material, their encounter with The Invisible Man is certainly no disappointment by any means. (***)
