Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952/Warner Archive DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C Extras: D Film: C+
PLEASE NOTE: This release is only available
from Warner Bros. in their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the
link below.
Though
Universal is the studio Bud Abbott & Lou Costello did much of their work,
being a smaller company at the time had its limits. When they wanted to make Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Kidd
(1952) in color, Universal would not pay for it, so their ability to do an
annual film independently led them to Warner Bros. and with Charles Laughton
sending up his performance in his 1945 Captain
Kidd film (reviewed elsewhere on this site), you can see why they wanted
color when working with the Academy Award winner.
A
treasure is involved and our duo are just trying to get buy when their
restaurant job brings them in contact with the violent slave-driver who is very
demanding of perfection during his dinner.
Puddin’ Head (Costello) has a love letter to give to a good friend of
his from a beautiful woman in a protective wooden casing, but Kidd has a
similar casing holding the map to buried treasure. During dinner, our nervous waiter (Kidd has
been sending back injured servers with the food!) mixes up the two and the
wackiness gets wackier as Kidd will do anything to get the map and the
treasure.
Laughton
is really good sending himself up (with shades of his work in the 1935 Mutiny On The Bounty, now on Blu-ray
and also reviewed on this site) and this is a film built around him as much as
Bud & Lou, not unlike their monster send-ups. Some jokes work better than others, but this
holds up well, even in the face of Johnny Depp’s Pirate action comedies. Some
of it is charming, other parts dated, with the passable musical numbers in an
otherwise non-musical film. However, all
is meant to be entertaining and there is more than enough here as the film is
nearly 60 years old to see it again or see it for the first time if you missed
it. It has chemistry, is an ambitious production
and a real color film from the most successful comedy team of the sound film
era.
The 1.33
X 1 color image has some flaws and softness, but looks decent for its age. It was also a rare film in that it was
produced in a format known as Super CineColor, an attempt of the CineColor
Company to compete with three-strip dye-transfer Technicolor in the quickly
growing color film marketplace.
CineColor was always the lesser two-color format and one Warner used on
some of their animated shorts to cut costs; a Technicolor short would also be
issued in cheaper, poorer CineColor copies to save money. The result was not the wide range Technicolor
offered and the process was not as sharp, using EastmanColor stocks which were
sharper on their own processed the new single-strip way, though EastmanColor
was no match for a Technicolor print.
The result is a rare feature film in the format with its own look and
feel, making this film more unique. It
has been decades since I have seen the film and this is the best I have seen it
in years.
The Dolby
Digital 1.0 Mono can also show its age with some rough spots and distortion,
plus it seems to be at a slightly lower volume than expected. There are sadly no extras, I wished for a
trailer at least.
For more
Abbott & Costello from Warner Bros., try this box set The Classic Comedy Teams Collection:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4532/Classic+Comedy+Teams+Collection
Here’s a
You Tube clip to Abbott & Costello
Meet Captain Kidd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R69fQ6gxYBA&feature=channel_video_title
To order Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Kidd,
go to this link:
http://bit.ly/WAC_Abbott
-
Nicholas Sheffo
