LITERAL REMAINS

Lets continue with a little more family fare this weekend.  If you can’t share the scare with the ones you love, who can you share it with?

Who Done It? isn’t a horror film, let me say that up front.  It’s a comedy mystery.  It’s Abbott & Costello; for that alone, you should watch it.

I grew up watching Bud and Lou.  One of the local syndicated channels beamed out of Nashville used to air Abbott and Costello double features on Saturday nights starting at midnight.  We used to stay up late and watch them.  They showed Bud and Lou after they stopped airing Elvira and Kung Fu Theater.  It wasn’t easy being mad, we did get to see Abbott and Costello, but we missed Elvira.

Who Done It? is my favorite Abbott and Costello movie.  Bud and Lou play soda jerks at the counter of a radio station; this was before television, and the radio station is like the size of the Empire State Building.  The guys want to break into the big time of radio broadcasting with their radio plays, hoping to write for their favorite program Murder At Midnight.  Well, murder does indeed happen at midnight, live on the air, and Bud and Lou decide it’s their chance to show what they’re made of:  they are going to solve the murder.

Like I said, it’s not a horror movie, but Who Done It? is a nice little mystery movie that’s safe for all ages.  It even has some excellently moody shots.  Plus it’s funny as all get out, especially Costello’s run-ins with an adolescent adversary who scams him at every opportunity.  The peek inside the world of radio dramas is interesting, in and of itself.  Can you imagine a world with no Internet, no cell phones, or IPods, or computers?  Can you imagine people using, what are they called, uh, a phone booth?  With a rotary phone?!

I may be wrong…it may be a glimpse into our horrifying past:)

the_novacula