City Slickers Get Caught in a Hillbilly Feud

Comin' Round the Mountain (1951)
Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Dorothy Shay, and Margaret Hamilton
Director: Charles Lamont
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When small-time talent agent Al Stewart (Abbott) book up-and-coming nightclub singer Dorothy McCoy (Shay) and talentless magician Wilbur the Magnificent (Costello) on the same bill, the two performers realize that not only are they cousins, but that Wilbur holds the key to locating a long-lost family treasure. So, the trio leave the big city for hillbilly country and riches... only to become embroiled in a reawakened backwoods feude between the McCoys and the Winfields.


"Comin' Round the Mountain" is definately one of Abbott & Costello's lesser films. This is partly because it that is also intended as a vehicle for singer Dorothy Shay. She has entirely too many musical numbers in the film (one would have been plenty), and her talent as an actress leaves something to be desired. I also think the hillbilly humor also hasn't aged well... well, or maybe the jokes just aren't that funny. (Although, paradoxically, part of me feels that if the film had spent a little more time on hillybillies fueding and shooting at each other, and gotten rid of some of the romance stuff, the film might have been funnier.)

Leave this one be, unless you're a tremendous A&C fan who must see all their films before your life is complete.

Abbott and Costello vs the Alien Amazons!

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (aka "Rocket and Roll") (1953)
Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Mari Blanchard, Robert Paige, Horace McMohan, and Anita Ekberg
Director: Charles Lamont
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When two workmen (Abbott and Costello) accidentally launch with an experimental space rocket, they think they end up on Mars. The truth is, they end up places far stranger than Mars... New Orleans during Mardi Gras and then Venus, a planet governed by immortal Amazons.


As my summary above states, Abbott and Costello never get to Mars in this film, despite the intentions of the builders of the top secret rocket and the movie's title. Instead, they move through a thin plot that is stretched to the breaking point to fill the movie's 77-minute running time, and every joke is beaten to death, particularly during the New Orleans segment. Things pick up a bit when the action moves to Venus (where Costello is made King), but it's only a slight improvement. I'm not even sure if it's the distraction of all the scantily clad beauty queens that tricked me into thinking the film got better.

This is one of the weakest Abbott & Costello pictures, and everyone but truly hardcore fans of their work should probably not bother with it.

Abbott and Costello vs Bedouins and Cheese-eatin' Surrender Monkeys!

Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)
Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Patricia Medina, Walter Slezak, Douglas Dumbrille and Wee Willie Davis
Director: Charles Lamont
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

While in North Africa on business, a couple of American wrestling promoters (Abbott and Costello) become drawn into local intrigues by a beautiful French intelligence agent (Medina) and agents of a villainous Arab Bedouin sheik (Dumbrille) and are tricked into joining the French Foreign Legion.


"Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion" is one of the funniest, fastest-paced films the duo made. The film barrels from comedy setpiece to comedy set piece and and nonsense verbal routine to nonsense verbal routine with barely an establishing shot to separate them.

As funny as the film is, it's not perfect. A couple of the extended comedy routines don't quite work--like the chase scene involving a jeep and Arab bad guys on horseback--and the ending feels a little rushed and badly constructed. However, the good far outweighs the bad here, and it's definitely worth checking out if you've enjoyed other Abbott and Costello films, or if you're just a lover of wild crazy comedies.

Or if you're a lover of films that probably couldn't even be made today. This film features villainous Arabs who are sexist, violent and duplicitous in all things--oh noes! Never mind that the real world contains plenty of real people who are far worse than the character portrayed by Douglass Dumbrille in this film.