Lost In Alaska (1952)

Lost In Alaska was another one of the many Abbott & Costello titles that I'd never heard of before deciding to explore as much of their filmography as I could get my hands on. I didn't expect much from it but, live and learn, it turned out to be a very enjoyable comedy with some great one-liners and at least one memorable routine (involving the duo sleeping in two hour shifts to keep a watch over a suicidal man - something that Bud manages to manipulate in his favour by winding forward the clock).

Our two leads play two volunteer firemen who make their lives more complicated when they save the life of heartbroken Nugget Joe McDermott (Tom Ewell). Joe is a gold prospector who got lucky with his prospecting but unlucky with his love life (he was rejected by Rosette, played by Mitzi Green). When his death is wrongly reported, Bud and Lou are wrongly wanted for murder and so they go with Joe when he returns to his hometown. Unfortunately, having changed his will to let people benefit from his newfound riches, Joe is wanted dead by a lot of greedy people (including Jake Stillman, played by Bruce Cabot) while Bud and Lou have to keep him alive to prove their innocence.

Directed by Jean Yarbrough, and written by Martin Ragaway and Leonard Stern, Lost In Alaska is a surprisingly top notch comedy from start to finish. Even the central contrivance that puts the leads in big trouble feels better than usual, a bit less forced despite being no less implausible.

The cast all do a great job. Mitzi Green plays a character who seems to change her mind from one scene to the next but she also shows that she's no pushover and there's a decent song from her, serving as a memorable introduction. Bruce Cabot is a decent baddie and Tom Ewell is very good as the unhappy Joe. Bud and Lou do their thing and do it well.

The finale is a bit of a disappointment but that shouldn't be enough to detract from all the fun of the first hour or so. There are some A & C movies that I'd easily watch again and some that I am just happy to have seen the once. This is one of the former.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Abbott-Costello-Hit-Lost-Alaska/dp/B000GUJGRM/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1341905155&sr=8-12

Abbott & Costello In The Foreign Legion (1950)

The movie starts with Bud and Lou playing a couple of guys choreographing some wrestling practice. It's going to be a great moneyspinner and they want everything to go smoothly. Mere moments later, the whole plan is in disarray when their main draw (Abdullah, played by William 'Wee Willie' Davis) decides that he's had enough and heads back home to Algeria. The guys, out of a sense of self-preservation, go after Abdullah, determined to get him back to America and wrestling for them but once in Algeria they find themselves, as usual, in the wrong place at the wrong time and circumstances lead to them taking shelter with, as you may have guessed, the Foreign Legion.

There's nothing here to get excited about even if the movie isn't a complete bore. The direction by Charles Barton is competent but the script by John Grant, Martin Ragaway and Leonard Stern is far from the best that the two leads have ever worked with. They do okay with the material, and one or two moments are very enjoyable (especially a scene involving various mirages), but this is undeniably lesser fare.

Sadly, the cast also feels like "lesser fare" to those who have enjoyed many other A & C adventures. The leads do their usual stuff, though Bud is a bit less harsh to Lou in this outing (which may make this one more enjoyable for some viewers), and William Davis does fine with his limited screentime but Patricia Medina isn't all that captivating in the one leading female role while Walter Slezak, Douglass Dumbrille, Leon Belasco and the others in the cast don't make much of an impression either.

One interesting aspect of the movie nowadays is seeing Tor Johnson in one of his many small roles he took before becoming best known years later for his work with Ed Wood but it's just a shame that there's nothing else worth singling out for attention in a film that most firmly resides in the arena of the average.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Abbott-Costello-Foreign-Legion-Keystone/dp/B000H5V9H6/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1337701783&sr=1-1