ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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All Sci-Fi member Rick Smith shares a "monsterkid memory" about the movie below.

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Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)



This was the first (partly) horror film I ever saw. I wanted to watch monster movies for as long as I can remember but my mom always worried that I'd have bad dreams. She never gave any other reason beyond the bad dreams. In later years it made me wonder if maybe she herself had suffered nightmares after seeing some horror film.

But when I was 7 years old, my dad bought a new 19" black and white TV set to replace our old 19" black and white TV set. So the old set was shunted to the parents' bedroom. Somehow the old TV in a new place was more interesting than a new TV in the old spot, so my mom and my two siblings and myself plopped on the bed and turned on the TV, on which ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN was in progress.

I can't remember how much of the movie we saw that day. I know we missed at least the first few minutes, but we may have missed much more than that. The only moment from the movie that I can absolutely, with full confidence, state that I remember from that afternoon was the sequence in which Lou sits on the Frankenstein Monster's lap and discovers he has extra hands all of a sudden.


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I remember my mom repeatedly asking if this was too scary, but there was no way that TV was getting turned off. I was in heaven, and my brother and sister seemed to enjoy it too. Well, after all, it was Abbott and Costello and we all loved them.

Surviving that movie and not having bad dreams convinced my mom that I might just survive a real monster movie. So a few weeks or months later, she allowed me to stay up way past my bedtime and watch RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE on the late show.

So, I have to thank this film not just for being vastly entertaining, but for being my gateway into the world of monsters.

By the way, one small correction from the above posts. It's true that Lon Chaney, Jr. did briefly play the Frankenstein Monster in this movie, but not in the dock scene throwing the barrels. In the laboratory scene, when the monster arises from the table and throws Lenore Aubert out the window -- that is Creighton. His final moment is when he turns back from the window and moves toward Lou.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)