Bud Abbott and Lou Costello

Throughout the movie Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, some of Lou's shouts when he gets in a tight spot sounds like his famous "AAAABBBBBBBBOOOOOOOTTTTTTTT!" yell.

And throughout the picture, Bud calls Lou by his given name "Lou" or his surname "Costello".

Then at the end when credits roll past the screen, the first character listed was Pete Patterson - played by Bud - and the second was Freddie Franklin - played by Lou.

Clearly as Strother Martin said in Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate. The scriptwriter and the post-production graphic artists were clearly given different scenarios and never coordinated their work. Such separation of duties is standard operational procedures in Hollywood which is why sometimes you may hear a voice-over announcer pronounce a character or place name differently than the actors.

Still, you would think that redrawing the cast cards and refilming the credits would be no major expense. It couldn't be that much more than reshooting a scene where the daily rushes show up continuity errors. After all, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were two of the most famous motion picture stars of the 20th century.

All this may be true, but Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy was also the last Abbott and Costello movie produced by a major studio. By the mid-1950's Bud and Lou had been dropping in popularity as their vaudeville style comedy began to pall. And given that from 1940 to 1956 they starred in thirty-six movies, it's inevitable that the old jokes and gags became overdone no matter how much the scriptwriters tried to craft variants.

On the other hand Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy is instructive from a cultural and historical standpoint. For one thing it illustrates that the famous "exotic Orient" theme remained popular in motion pictures well into the mid-20th century. In the film there are the exotic dancers (not in the modern sense, of course), worshippers of ancient religions, and underground tombs linked with winding underground passageways.

Before the reader pooh-poohs these old-fashioned motifs, they are still around today, suitably modified of course. Today we have the equivalent "exotic science fiction" films. So a movie or television show might have exotic alien life forms, customs from ancient civilizations from long, long ago and galaxies far, far away, and convoluted hallways in gigantic spaceships where an entire movie consists of alternating scenes of the actors running from the aliens, hiding from the aliens, and fighting the aliens - repeated over and over for more than 2 hours.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy is certainly superior to such דְּרָכַ֫יִם. What helps the movie is there are some good supporting actors playing both good guys and bad guys. If not actually famous, their ability was made evident by their ubiquitous appearance in films and television.

For instance, the High Priest of Klaris (yes, the mummy's name was Klaris) was played by a young and quite slender Richard Deacon. Richard, as scholars of 1960's television know, achieved fame (and greater heftiness) playing Mel, the harried television producer on The Dick Van Dyke Show. From 1959 to 1984 he appeared in over 180 films and television shows.

The head honcho bad guy - actually it was a bad gal, the head honcha Madame Rontru - was played by Marie Windsor, an actress that appeared in 170 movies and television shows from the 1950's through the 1990's. One of her henchmen - who we only know as Charlie - was Michael Ansara, an extremely prolific actor who took the role of Judas in The Robe (which featured among others actors, Richard Burton). He also appeared in nearly 200 television shows from 1950 to the turn of the Millennium. One of his more campy roles was as the Arab chieftain in "The Arabian Affair" on The Man From Uncle (Phyllis Newman played his daughter), but he also played the Klingon commander, Khang, in the Star Trek episode "The Day of the Dove". Although Michael appeared mostly in guest spots, he was a regular on the short lived series Broken Arrow, where he played Cochise, the famous Apache chief.

Lou died in 1959 at age 52 and Bud in 1974 age 76. Two years later the TV Movie Bud and Lou aired where Buddy Hackett played Lou and Harvey Korman played Bud. The show does stick with the general facts fairly well, but some critics feel Buddy plays Lou as more cantankerous than he really was and Harvey plays Bud as less troublesome than he was. On the other hand Buddy and Harvey do a fairly credible rendering of the famous "Who's On First" skit. Performances of the skit remain popular today and there have been some amateur performances that are quite good. But no one really did it better than Bud and Lou.

Bud and Lou does leave out quite a bit. From watching the movie, you would think that Lou had only one child, a son, and Bud wasn't married. Actually Bud's marriage lasted from 1918 until his death - 56 years. Lou had three other children, all daughters. His second oldest, Carole, appears in a short scene as a flower girl in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

Bud and Lou were most popular during the 1940's and as early as 1950 it was clear television was not a passing fad. Most of the radio and motion picture stars tried their hands at the new medium at one time or another, and some did better than others. Bud and Lou tried it out and had a television show that began in 1952 and lasted two seasons. But they remain most famous for their movies.

As to what movie is the best, that, like all absolute and immutable truths, is a matter of opinion. One film that is consistently high in the critics' eyes is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein where Lon Chaney, Jr., plays the monster. Other favorites are Hold That Ghost, The Time of Their Lives, and of course, Buck Privates.

We don't want to appear to be overly effusive and we have to admit that some of Bud and Lou's efforts were not that stellar. Not that Africa Screams is a complete loss and there were two guest stars of note who played themselves. One was Clyde Beatty a famous circus owner, animal trainer, and hunter. In the movie, Lou starts to tell a stranger how he hunted animals with Clyde Beatty. When he then asks the stranger who he is, the reply was "Clyde Beatty". At the time this was no doubt quite funny although today most people don't remember Clyde at all.

A few more people know of Frank Buck whose book Bring 'Em Back Alive was so popular that Frank made product endorsements in major magazines. After Lou and Bud reached Africa, Lou comes across an animal trapper who has just set a trap for orangutan gargantua (Frank pronounces the first word "orangatang" which is a common Americanism). Lou again begins to boast how he had trapped animals with Frank Buck. Of course, Lou soon learns that he's speaking with Frank Buck and is properly flustered. The unintentional joke for the cognoscenti - it's actually a flat out mistake - is that Frank Buck never trapped animals in Africa. His professional activities were limited to South America and Asia. And there's even a double error as no kind of orangutan is found in Africa, certainly not an orangutuan gargantua which didn't even exist.

What helps Africa Screams is, as in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, there are other guest characters of note besides Clyde and Frank. The movie features former and future Stooge, Shemp Howard (Shemp was actually a Stooge before Curly and then returned after Curly's stroke) and future Stooge Joe Besser (who joined the Stooges after Shemp died). One of the heavies is played by former boxing heavyweight champion Max Baer. As all true students of boxing and 1960's television know, Max was the father of Max Baer, Jr. Max, Jr., of course, played Jethro Bodine, the large and not terribly bright son of the Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies. Max, Jr. wasn't able to break the curse of being Jethro Bodine until he took the role of the homicidal sheriff in Macon County Line, a film which Max, Jr. also wrote and produced.

Except for these features of interest, Africa Screams is one of Abbott and Costello's more forgettable movies. Virtually every African stereotype is used and the depiction of the natives, the way they're addressed, and the world in which they live is horribly embarrassing. There is also far, far too much of Lou running around in panic and yelling. It's really not very funny the first time and to see and hear it repeatedly for 80 minutes doesn't make it funnier.