Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd

Year 6, Day 20 - 1/20/14 - Movie #1,619

BEFORE: I need to figure out when I'm going to watch the first "Hobbit" film.  I'm doing fantasy films this week, but would it be better to hold off and watch all three together, later this year?  (assuming they run the 2nd film on cable just before releasing the 3rd film theatrically...) Watching "Pirates! Band of Misfits" with the voice of Martin Freeman seems like an opportune lead-in, but thematically that would take me off of pirates.  I'm now at the stage where I can either link films thematically or by actor, but not both.  Ah wait, I think I see where I can work "The Hobbit" into my chain later this week.  That means bumping all of February films forward one day, but I can do that.  I control the chain, it doesn't control me.

(Oh, it can be done - Brian Blessed from "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" was in "Flash Gordon" with William "Porkins" Hootkins, who was also in "Twilight's Last Gleaming" with Leif Erickson - but that hardly counts as a direct link.)

THE PLOT:  Rocky and Puddin' Head are waiting tables at an inn on Tortuga when a letter given them by Lady Jane for delivery to Martingale gets switched with a treasure map. Kidd and Bonney kidnap them to Skull Island to find said treasure.

AFTER: Somehow I missed this one when I was a kid, and Channel 38 in Boston ran most of the Abbott and Costello films on Sunday mornings.  I remember "Hold That Ghost", "Buck Privates", "Here Come the Co-Eds" and of course, "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein".  That last title shows a bit about the usual Bud and Lou formula - there would be a wacky mix-up, some tangential love story, and then the "X Factor", where our heroes would meet the mummy, or Boris Karloff, or in this case, Captain Kidd.  

Unfortunately, after the wacky mix-up where the treasure map gets confused with a love letter, and the actual meeting of Captain Kidd takes place, there's not much of a story here.  Everything just feels like an afterthought - like they're wrapping up the film halfway through.  Geez, there's a meatier plot in your average episode of "Gilligan's Island", a show where almost nothing happened in each episode to bring the castaways closer to being rescued.  

Bud & Lou's characters work in a tavern and have to serve Captain Kidd - who proceeds to punch out or kick every waiter in the place.  I think it's sad that the comedians who delivered the verbal masterpiece "Who's On First?" had to resort to the type of slapstick normally served up by the Three Stooges.  After that, they dress up like British navy types, fooling exactly no one, in order to get to the island with the treasure.  It doesn't make sense - why would you hire the pirate who the treasure belongs to, to get you to the island where the treasure is.  Did they think the pirate's just going to let them dig up his own booty?  

I don't know, I expect more from Abbott & Costello.  Maybe I've changed in the last 30 years, and my tastes are more demanding - I need movies that are going to challenge me mentally, and these guys weren't trying to do that.  Instead they just want to romance a beautiful pirate babe, sing a few operatic (?) shanties, and dig up a chest of gold.  I guess it entertained the audiences in 1952, but it falls way short by today's standards.

Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Charles Laughton (last seen in "Witness for the Prosecution"), Hillary Brooke, Bill Shirley, Leif Erickson (last seen in "On the Waterfront"), Fran Warren. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 barrels