On a dark and stormy night house detective Casey Edwards (Bud Abbott) is on duty at the Lost Caverns Resort Hotel. A guest named Amos Strickland (Nicholas Joy) arrives to check in. Strickland is a high-powered criminal attorney working on a much-publicized case. During the check in process Strickland has an altercation with Freddie Phillips (Lou Costello), the hotel’s bellhop. Strickland complains to desk clerk Jeff Wilson (Gar Moore) and hotel manager Mr. Melton (Alan Mowbray). Strickland has Freddie fired.
Later Freddie goes to Strickland’s room to apologize hoping to get his job back. He finds Strickland’s dead body and runs to get Casey and Mr. Melton for help. Inspector Wellman (James Flavin) and Sergeant Stone (Mikel Conrad) arrive to take over the investigation. Soon the whole hotel knows about the murder. Freddie ends up being the prime suspect and is ordered to stay at the hotel until he is cleared.
Before he died Strickland sent telegrams to Angela Gordon (Lenore Aubert), Swami Talpur (Boris Karloff), Mrs. Hargreave (Victoria Horne), T Hanley Brooks (Roland Winters) Lawrence Crandall (Harry Hayden), Mrs. Grimsby (Claire Du Brey) and Mike Relia (Vincent Renno) telling them that he plans to write a tell-all book and to show up at the hotel or secrets from their pasts will be exposed. The conspirators decide that they need a fall guy, so they frame Freddie for the murder and then attempt to stage his suicide.
In the meantime, more murders happen, and Freddie and Casey end up finding the bodies. With more suspects than clues, the police decide to use Freddie as a decoy to draw out the murderer.
“Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff” was released in 1949 and was directed by Charles Barton. It is an American murder mystery screwball comedy.
The plot structure of the movie is the standard Abbott and Costello format, lots of slapstick, wacky situations and small comedy routines culminating in the duo stumbling onto the real killer.
The role of Swami Talpur, played by Boris Karloff, was originally written for a female character named Madame Switzer. The role was changed at the last minute and Karloff was hired just a few days before shooting began. The title of the film was actually “Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer”. When Karloff came on board the comma and Karloff’s name were added, perhaps as a co-star credit but ended up being part of the title. Karloff, spoiler alert, is not the actual killer. Someone else is.
The movie was banned in Denmark because of the scene where corpses are playing cards. In Australia and New Zealand, the scenes where the corpses appear at all were edited out. The original script was written with Bob Hope in mind, but Universal Pictures purchased the rights to the film and had the script rewritten for the comedy duo.