Correct me if I'm wrong, Rak, but what I take by your dismissing of SCARY MOVIE as an accurate equivalent to A&CMF is not only that SCARY MOVIE was pretty silly throughout, but that they also played every character for laughs in pretty much every scene (the AIRPLANE approach). In A&CMF, sure, there are the scenes with the comedians and the monsters that don't play out the way we've been used to in the straight horror pictures (The Wolfman just can't seem to catch the pudgy Costello, or the Monster backs away in momentary fright from Lou, etc.).

However, take out the scenes with the comedy duo, and you have the horror characters behaving much as we've come to accept them. Dracula doesn't crack jokes with Sandra or comically miss biting her when he's trying to put her under his control, for example. Those scenes are all played straight (and several are very good). I think it's been pointed out before -- probably by someone on this board -- that if you take out the A&C comedy bits, you have a pretty good plot that effectively combines all the classic monsters into one storyline in a way that works much better than something like Stephen Sommers' VAN HELSING.

Sure, we might as well let those limeys make Frankenstein and Dracula movies...
It's probably a good thing they did. I think as Bill Warren pointed out in KWTS, seeing a double bill of BRIDES OF DRACULA and THE LEECH WOMAN didn't invite a very favorable comparison between imported British horrors and homemade Universal ones by that time.