Onward we go into the far away land of Abbott and Costello features, this time we’re LOST IN ALASKA. Another in a long line of good films that have some really funny parts but doesn’t quite gel one hundred percent. Bud and Lou made an insane amount of feature films over a 15 year period, thirty five starring features in fifteen years. “Great googly moogly,” as Frank Zappa once said, and he’s a guy who knew a thing or two about being prolific. They can’t all be great, but even the fact the worst of them have moments or two that shine are a testament to the fact Bud and Lou were pretty funny guys and LOST IN ALASKA has its funny moments mixed in with some music and some plot that after a while, drags on.
Yes, the music is here again. I guess the songs made a comeback for a few films here after being absent for a while. This is just a guess on my part, but maybe the thought was, “Those Dean and Jerry guys are raking in the moolah at Paramount and that Dean guy can carry a decent tune. We also had our biggest box office success when we had music - let’s bring back the music.” Again, just a guess on my part. Anyway, there’s two musical numbers here and they, as usual, fall into the it’s OK but not in my wheelhouse category. Nothing new there. The numbers are spread pretty far apart and Lou, piggybacking off JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, gets some involvement in the second one. Interestingly enough, the leading lady, now in her thirties, is Mitzi Green. Any of you knuckle heads who watched Wheeler and Woolsey’s THE CUCKOOS, a film which is reviewed on this site, all the way back from 1930 will remember her as a ten year old doing musical numbers and impersonating Hollywood stars. Yes, it’s the same person. She’s OK in this. I’d say the romantic couple here isn’t quite as All American as the normal couple in Bud and Lou films. She has more of a hard show girl demeanor and the leading man, played by Tom Ewell, is more middle aged and desperate than the average leading man.
The story itself starts out OK, as Bud and Lou save the despondent leading man from suicide after his girl rejects him. It does lead to some entertaining water gags when they save him from drowning and the classic gag when they take two hour sleeping shifts so one stays awake and makes sure the leading man doesn’t commit suicide. Bud Abbott, on screen being the dishonest slug we all know and love, turns the clock ahead two hours the moment Lou’s head hits the pillow for some rest, making it so he robs Lou of a night’s sleep. A really funny extended gag routine made all the more better when Bud cons his way out explaining why it’s still dark at 8:00, explaining why the clock only rings four times when it’s 8:00 and using convoluted math to lie his way out of the situation. Classic Bud and Lou routine.
As the story goes on, Bud and Lou are wrongly accused of killing the leading man who never died, they’re away in Alaska and the leading man has a zillion people out to kill him because he used to be a sheriff who hung a lot of the towns people. So they have to hide and can’t really leave the building. The story does drag on as the film goes towards the middle, a lot of the couple explaining things away to each other and their relationship is kind of confusing - but that’s not the reason I watch Bud and Lou films anyway. In all this, they sneak in one great roulette table gag where Lou unknowingly wins a ton of money by putting a chip on the table and calls out numbers in a conversation which just happen to be the winning numbers. He then loses the money after a while, never realizing he won a bunch in the first place. Beyond that, the film drags in the middle until Bud and Lou are out in the snow.
Bud and Lou go on a dog sled through the snow with a bunch of dogs and a crazy ride ensues. Eventually, they get lost in the snow, just the two of them. After getting bored with the plot previously, all the sudden, the film breathes new life. Bud and Lou never needed bells and whistles, all they need is a simple set up and each other. We get it here. Bud yells at a crazed Lou. Lou keeps heating bottles that Bud rightfully points out turn to ice. They do an ice fishing gag where the lines get caught and Lou drags Bud through the water like in Buster Keaton’s THE FROZEN NORTH and to Stooge fans, ROCKIN’ THRU THE ROCKIES. Just watching Lou go crazy, Bud yell at Lou, and a few simple physical routines with these two and the film works just fine. The romantic couple? Who cares? The essence of what make Bud and Lou great is contained in this desolate icy wasteland.
Then there’s the infamous slapstick finale which kind of screams low budget. There’s the polar bear who is so obviously a guy dressed in a suit. There’s the obvious cheap background that passes as an Alaskan skyline and the igloos which the bad guys are able to flip over as if they’re made of styrofoam. I’ve heard people complain about these things, but it’s not a bother to me. It’s a silly slapstick ending that works just fine for Bud and Lou and like hinted at in the paragraph above, they don’t need bells and whistles to be funny. For the most part, I enjoy LOST IN ALASKA. Yes, there are better Bud and Lou films and yes, it does drag a little in the middle, but there’s enough funny business here to make this one memorable. That’s good enough for me.
