Bill Stromberg and John Morgan did a bang-up job covering the classic monster movie scores of Frank Skinner and Hans J. Salter over the years for the Marco Polo record label, first in 1995 with highlights from Son of Frankenstein (1939), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), and The Wolf Man (1941) plus a full album of House of Frankenstein (1944), then in 2000 with The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). As part of a recent Kickstarter campaign by Intrada records, the two got to return to the genre with Skinner’s score for the 1948 horror comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. With Morgan passing away after the recording but before the album was released, the re-recording has a bittersweet element to it, especially since the FSM board has comments from Morgan almost 20 years ago where he talked of his hopes to one day record this one.

Curiously, Skinner chose not to reuse any of the many themes done for early monster movies, something that wasn’t the case with Salter’s earlier House of Frankenstein. Rather, Skinner created a lot of new ideas for characters and concepts that could be easily slotted in and out of individual scenes. It’s still deathly serious music for the concept, but this kind of “this character appears so this theme appears” approach seems to be Skinner making somewhat of a concession to the comedic nature of the film without completely Mickey Mousing his score.* Brief instances of wah-wah brass are perhaps the only indicator that this even came from an Abbott and Costello film! Still, with succinct motifs being the dominant means of storytelling, expect the new album to feel a bit like a stream-of-consciousness, midnight-hued orchestral tone poem, one that impresses on the whole without leaving you with vivid memories of any one section in particular.

The Kickstarter project for this recording hit its stretch goal, and so we also got 22 minutes of score from Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops (1955); if Meet Frankenstein is generally considered one of the duo’s top-tier films, the latter movie is closer to the bottom of their rankings, though that has no bearing on the resulting score. Despite being done by three composers (William Lava, Herman Stein, and Henry Mancini a couple of years before his big break with Peter Gunn), the score is generally coherent, though one should go in expecting pure slapstick in keeping with the film’s 1920s setting. If your brain thinks Bugs Bunny, that may be no accident as Lava wrote for various Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons in the years to come. Treat it like the zany music for Arsenic and Old Lace that Tribute put at the end of its Adventures of Don Juan re-recording and you might have a decent time.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein: ****
Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops: ***

I know Craig already put a detailed track-by-track review online. Anyone else pick this one up?

*To paraphrase Lincoln Osiris, never go full Mickey Mousing