14. By the end of the 1940s the Classic Monsters were played for laughs
In 1948 Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein was released, and the classic monsters appeared with the comedians as straight men and comic foils. In the film, crates containing Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster are due to be delivered to a wax museum, and baggage handlers Abbott and Costello are warned of the shipment by Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man. It was the first appearance of Dracula, the monster, and the Wolf Man in a Universal film since 1945, and it was widely regarded as an indication that none of the three classic monsters retained any ability to frighten an audience.
Glenn Strange played the monster, one of three times he held the role, the same number as Boris Karloff. Strange was best known for his role of the bartender, Sam, in the television western Gunsmoke. Toward the end of the film, after defeating and escaping the monsters, Abbott and Costello had a brief encounter with the Invisible Man, voiced by Vincent Price. Using the former symbols of horror as a comic device was so successful that Universal, as it had done when they were frightening, went back to them after they had become merely entertaining.