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Comedians are uncomfortable about symbolism in their schtick. A routine that wowed 'em in vaudeville, radio, movies, and TV is just a schtick -- a bit, a gag, a routine that lets the clown collect laughs and a paycheck. But if we are to remember, relish, and celebrate our baggy pants ancestors of the Twentieth century we shall have to look for, and enjoy, the symbolism that indirectly and unintentionally grows in their films down the tunnel of Twenty First century vision. In A & C Meet F we find the brash duo of Bud and Lou confronting the very real ghouls of cinema horror. Vampire. Science demonized. And brute animal rage. Nobody who had a hand in this luscious harem scarem has ever claimed the movie was anything but a quickie comedy to take advantage of the top comedians of the era and the quirky monsters Universal studios had under contract. Yet the subtext is there and gives the film an amazing philosophic undertow. Dracula represents the relentless bloodsucking of a capitalism gone mad; a financial religion that drained mankind with The First World War, The Great Depression, and numerous other fiscal follies. The Frankenstein Monster is nightmare science -- radiation and pollution and genetic mutations run amuck. The wolfman is the bestial element in all mankind, barely restrained at the best of times and when let loose undiscriminating in carnage and outrage. We are all afraid of these things. And so are Bud and Lou. But the message, the philosophy, of the movie shows us two uneducated upstarts armed only with good hearts and good intentions soundly defeating the supernatural and corrupt powers that have plagued mankind since Adam shook hands with Eve and asked what was for dinner. This movie is utterly manipulative; you're supposed to laugh here and shiver there, once you've paid the price of admission. Nothing more. Yet a moments pondering leaves us with the happy thought that perhaps, just perhaps, somewhere there are a couple of dimbulbs, weak as the rest of us, who have enough sanity and grace to disembowel the fears that stalk us. They are neither angels nor devils, and never will get straight just exactly who is on first, but for a few glorious reels they show us a goofy courage and honesty that can keep us looking up, even when we are spiraling down.

The belly laugh is both illegitimate and orphaned in today's cinema comedy. Writers, directors and performers will go for the gross-out laugh or the cerebral titter, but nudge them towards the broad plains of slapstick and they come down with Pecksniff Fever, the symptoms of which are a sickly desire to edit out real-time physical humor, inability to perform the double-take and constant complaining that the opportunities in front of them are "kids stuff". The best cure for these whining victims is a constant dose of Woody Allen's movie SLEEPER. Allen pulls faces, takes pratfalls and battles a giant pudding with the panache of an old-fashioned troupe of circus clowns. The Dixieland jazz score, with its screaming clarinets and yodeling trombones, is reminiscent of the old Marvin Hatley scores that so aided and abetted the shenanigans of The Little Rascals and Laurel & Hardy in the mighty days of slapstick yore. SLEEPER is one long chase, with Allen evading the authorities in various disguises or simply girding up his loins and skipping away like a madman. Even when caught and brainwashed he still manages to botch up the computer tapes he is assigned to handle, turning them into something resembling the remains of a taffy pull. The music, the pacing, the frantic acting; it all conspires to stir up our diaphragm to the bursting point. We have to guffaw and let the tears stream down our raw cheeks as Allen unerringly out-Chaplins Chaplin and out-Three Stooges the Stooges. This kind of movie teaches us how to laugh out loud. Allen has gone on to bigger(?) and better(?) things since this movie but he's never since been able to tickle himself into such an exuberant physical frenzy. Most great clowns are pretty sad mental cases, so perhaps we need to place the blame for the current drouth of belly laughs with Prozac and the other physcotropic drugs that now rid our creative zanies of their demons.

When whipping up the froth of a musical comedy most creators and commentators forget that fateful second word . . . COMEDY. Not to take away from Astaire & Rogers' beautiful balletic grace, but no one ever gave more comedy more modestly yet more professionally than Edward Everett Horton. His triple-barreled name alone suggests haughty dignity and sniffing puritanism, and his role in this film, as in so many others, gives him ample scope to screw up his mouth in petty disdain, look aghast at social blunders, and sputter in disbelief over the foibles of others while generously ignoring his own idiocies. Horton is a reactor, one which boosts a fairly pedestrian plot to the Moon & beyond. Like Margret DuMont with the Marx Brothers, there is something about the pernickity Horton that begs us to tilt his top hat and fling a banana peel his way just for the delightful reaction we are sure of getting. Perplexed or chagrined, the hatchet-faced Horton is a monument to the lost art of supporting clown -- those dumb bunnies and prissy busybodies that used to inhabit movies and give them life & breath even when the big-shot stars were off the screen. Horton had impeccable timing in delivering a line or flashing a double-take -- you feel he could just as easily count the nano-seconds between the neutron pulses of an atom. If he seems to intrude too much into the musical numbers of this movie it's simply because the director/editor must have been overly fond of his coy mugging. I recommend that music lovers rewatch this film and concentrate on Edward Everett Horton. Your attention will be well-rewarded with deep chuckles and an abiding affection for this New England zany.