The Naughty Nineties is a 1945 American film directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello.

Against the advice of his daughter Caroline, his lead actor Dexter Broadhurst, and his chief roustabout Sebastian Dinwiddle, the Captain joins them for a card game at a local gambling house.

The Captain is plied with alcohol until he is intoxicated and gets involved in a crooked card game where he loses controlling interest in the show boat to Bonita and Crawford.

[2] The film also contains the "Lower/Higher" routine, where Costello auditions as a singer while Abbott shouts directions to the stage crew to change the height and placement of the backdrop curtain.

Bonita sneaks poison into Lou's wine, leading to the old swapping of glasses routine (previously done by Abbott & Costello in Pardon My Sarong).

Variations of this old vaudeville routine were done by several movie comedians, most famously in the 1933 Marx Brothers film Duck Soup.

To break up the crooked card game and rescue Captain Sam, Abbott concocts a plan to dress as a bear and scare everyone out of the casino.

[2] Variety wrote: "It's one of their average musicomedies containing considerable of the standard material, either straight or rewrite, with which they've been identified for years. ...

While they lack the genius of Stan and Ollie it's slapstick and music hall, not sublime comedies of errors ...

In November 2019, Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection was rereleased on DVD and Blu-ray as an 80th anniversary edition.