Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops

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Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops (1950) starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Set in 1912, Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops casts Bud Abbott and Lou Costello as a couple of New Yorkers who are swindled out of their life savings by con artist Joseph Gorman (Fred Clark). Pursuing the villain to Hollywood, the boys discover that the double-dealer is now posing as autocratic Russian film director. To get Abbott and Costello out of the way, the crook and his partner in crime hire the boys as stuntmen, intending to kill them off at the first oppurtunity. But the comic duo save the day when they enlist the aid of the Keystone Kops in capturing the fleeing villain, who has absconded with the studio payroll.
Certainly not the equal of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Cops is still a funny, charming movie. It has several funny moments, a good story, and nice interaction between Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. More slapstick than normal, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; many of the stunt scenes are harrowing to watch, with the tension increasing the humor. A nice part of the Abbott and Costello DVD collection.

Trivia for Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955)

Cameo: [Mack Sennett] seminal silent-picture director directs a pie-throwing sequence.
Three members of the original Keystone Cops of silent films worked on the picture: Hank Mann, Harold Goodwin and Heinie Conklin.
The chase at the end was sold by Castle Films in 8 and 16mm film under the title “Have Badge, Will Chase.”
When Willie (Lou Costello) goes to the theatre, the pretty lady in the box office is actually Lou Costello’s real-life daughter Carole Costello. She was made up to look much older than her real age.
When Costello arrives at Edison’s Black Maria studio in West Orange, NJ and finds he has been duped into buying it by Fred Clark, his new studio sign gets thrown into a pile of others representing the others who were defrauded into thinking they were buying a working movie studio. Among the discarded signs is “Grant Productions”, an in-joke on the name of long-time A&C collaborator, writer John Grant, who received credit on 31 of their films as well as their TV work.