The World of Abbott and Costello (1965)

Movie Info

I’ll get you my Lou Costello and your little Bud too!

Abbott and Costello are best friends but love to antagonize themselves.  As they traverse the world (and the Milky Way) and hold jobs from hat salesmen to plumbers, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello managed to change comedy in the process.

Directed by Sidney Miller and narrated by comedian Jack E. Leonard, The World of Abbott and Costello is a compilation film made up of Abbott and Costello films.  The movie was released as a double-billing with McHale’s Navy Joins the Air Force.  The movie was rather poorly reviewed, but is available on DVD with other Abbott and Costello movies.

Well, at least you get “Who’s on First”

I am about fifty-fifty with Abbott and Costello.  Some of their word play and vaudeville style of plays are amazing, but most of the plots of the movies are very thrown together.  Here, you get some great moments (like the classic “Who’s on First”), but you also get a lot of weaker clips with no rhyme or reason.

The movie is a poor tribute to innovators.  It contains clips of Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, Buck Privates, Buck Privates Come Home, Comin’ Round the Mountain, In the Navy, In Society, Hit the Ice, The Naughty Nineties, Mexican Hayride, Lost in Alaska, Little Giant, The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, Ride ’Em Cowboy, and Who Done It?  The narration by Jack E. Leonard is sparse and poorly written in a way to almost tell a story (but not really).

The frog and I have a similar opinion

The movie is pretty poorly put together.  The clips used weren’t really a highlight reel of “the best of”, but a collection of general clips.  It is important to note that at this time, there were no VCRs, and fans were subject to the whims of movie theaters or TV stations so something like The World of Abbott and Costello made more sense.

Don’t bother with The World of Abbott and Costello.  You are much better off hunting down the original films if you are interested in Abbott and Costello.  This feels simply like a moneymaker slapped together long after the duo had called it quits (and six years after Lou Costello’s death).  It is considered Abbott and Costello’s “last film” after the non-Universal film Dance with Me, Henry in 1956 (and Lou Costello’s final film The 30 Foot Bride in 1959).