Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Charles Lamont

Writers:

John Grant (writer)
Lee Loeb (story)

Release Date:

21 February 1955 (Sweden)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

When every face wore a custard pie, and vamps broke hearts with a winking eye!

Plot:

Harry and Willie buy the Edison Movie Studio in the year 1912 from Joseph Gorman, a confidence man. They follow Gorman to Hollywood where...

Plot Keywords:

Movie Studio | Hollywood | Airport | 1910s | Car On Train Tracks

Cast

Bud Abbott	...	Harry Pierce
Lou Costello	...	Willie Piper
Fred Clark	...	Joseph Gorman, aka Sergei Toumanoff
Lynn Bari	...	Leota Van Cleef
Max 'Slapsie Maxie' Rosenbloom	...	Hinds (as Maxie Rosenbloom)
Frank Wilcox	...	Rudolph Snavely
Harold Goodwin	...	Cameraman (as Herold Goodwin)
Roscoe Ates	...	Wagon Driver
Mack Sennett	...	Himself
Heinie Conklin	...	Studio Guard
Hank Mann	...	Prop Man

Runtime:

80 min | Argentina:85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | UK:U

Filming Locations:

California Highway 118 between Simi & the outskirts of Moorpark, California, USA

Company:

Universal International Pictures (UI)

Trivia:

When Lou Costello arrives at Thomas A. Edison's Black Maria studio in West Orange, NJ, and finds he has been duped into buying it by Fred Clark, his new studio sign gets thrown into a pile representing the others who were defrauded into thinking they were buying a working movie studio. Among the discarded signs is "Grant Productions", an in-joke on the name of long-time A&C collaborator and writer John Grant, who received credit on 31 of their films as well as their TV work.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In the climactic chase sequence, the shadows of Fred Clark and Lynn Bari are clearly visible on the process screen behind them.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "The Rockford Files: The Attractive Nuisance (#4.14)" (1978)

A Nice Cartoon

I've seen 28 A&C movies, and I have to say that this comedy team is consistently enjoyable. The only movie that's no good is their last ("Dance w/Me, Henry"); all the others range from fall-over hilarious to innocently droll. In a couple of films Costello seems distracted and campy, but in most he manages to be sympathetic, as he is in this one.

I have especially enjoyed sorting through their later "lesser" movies, like "…Go to Mars" and "…Go to Alaska", which I found quite entertaining, and I am entertained by this movie for most of the same reasons: Costello's cherubic character seems more warm and ingratiating as the movies go along. To me, the more relaxed timing in their acting and partnership makes them more engaging. Instead of so much verbal patter, the later movies emphasize character, and may actually be funnier and more appealing to anyone speaking English as a foreign language (Cantinflas movies, with their long stretches of static action, are miserably boring to watch if you don't know Spanish).

In "…Keystone Cops", I found myself once again watching a cartoon-like feature-length movie that just happened to have, miraculously, Abbott and Costello as main characters. How do you go wrong with that, especially if you have an 8-year-old mind in a 56-year-old body? Nope, there are none of the classic verbal routines here, but how many of those can you watch over and over again? A&C are plenty amusing as protagonists—a classic duo like Laurel and Hardy, and although they did not make me roll with laughter, the movie certainly kept me smiling with its convivial mood and enjoyable cast.

The movie has good production values, with lots of real out-of-doors shots, steam engines, single prop airplanes, and lots and lots of stunts. It is more of an "action film" than some of their other films; in fact, it's worth watching just to see the stunt men, who are really fabulous. Generally I am offended when one of these films stops being an A&C movie and becomes a stunt-man movie (as Buster Keaton famously said, "Stunt men aren't funny", meaning they don't convey character). But here, the director sets up the stunts so clearly (sometimes frightening, like the train-in-the-tunnel), that they come across as very funny events. The actors playing the Keystone Cops are stupendous. I had to stop-motion parts of the final chase because I couldn't believe what they were doing.

The film has an excellent final joke.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that in some movies, like this one, the lip sync is way off during some of the long shots?