In combing boilerplate horror movie tropes with cornball slapstick, it arrived 8 years before 'Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein' established that sort of mash-up as a genre all to itself......
And in the oddest twist of Hollywood casting fate, it stands as the one and only movie that featured the mighty horror Triumvirate, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre.....all together.
You can only sigh wistfully and wish someone could have found a better, more suitable movie for these three icons to join forces in.......but that's showbiz.
The 3 Amigos of fright function only as window dressing for actual stars of the movie......a spindly, bespectacled band leader named Kay Kyser and his jazz-swing orchestra. Kay's shtick involved dressing up in a cap and gown and hitting audience members with questions like "what a measle, a weasel and an easel?"
Hey, back in 1940, these were the jokes, folks.
Kyser mostly served as straight man to several of his goofy band members, including the prime comedy relief, a Jerry Lewis precursor who billed himself as Ish Kabibble........you know at once you're supposed to laugh at Ish, cause he's got a bowl haircut with severe bangs and makes funny faces like he's the Friendly Neighborhood Village Idiot.
Kay and the gang take on a gig playing at a huge spooky mansion where our favorite unholy trio of Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre try their damndest to bump off an innocent young heiress to gain control of her estate.
Bring on the seances loaded up with phony ghosts, floating crockery and plunging chandeliers........and after that, it's on to the secret passages, near misses with blowdarts and stuffed gorillas in creepy underground lairs......
As Ish Kabibble strains to look stupid, Kay gets into a furious smackdown with Lugosi and the band breaks into musical numbers like "The Bad Humor Man".........which features the Korny Kabibble as pissed off ice cream peddler.......(get it? He's the bad humor man....yuk, yuk)
Is any of this as unintentionally funny as it sounds? Maybe, if you're at all seduced by the innocent nostalgia of 1940's cinema.........but fair warning......if you're not, this movie comes off as a bizarre freakshow that might have best been left in a permanently buried time capsule......
Since BQ falls in that first, seducible category, we'll freely admit to smiling at all the ancient hi-jink on display here. We only found fault in its overlength.......if only they'd held it down to 75 minutes, it wouldn't have tried our patience so much.
One thing in this movie you do not want to miss - the band putting on a display of the wild and unearthly 'Sonovox' technique (think of it as a prehistoric warm-up to AutoTune).....the sound of the band's instruments filtered through a voice box wrapped around a singer's vocal cords.......so it sounds like the trombone's doing the singing...........
For Kay Kyser's boundless enthusiasm and the immortal Ish Kabibble (whose name we love saying over and over again), 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).
And for you archivists of actors......yes, that young guy laboring over Kay's Kollege Kwiz is none other than veteran character Jeff Corey.
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