Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed By: Mel Brooks
Produced By: Michael Gruskoff
Written By: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Mary Shelley (novel)
Starring: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman
Original Release: 1974
Reviewed By: Aaron Hammonds
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)
Synopsis: Dr Frederick Frankenstein (which he insists is pronounced Fronk-en-steen) (Gene Wilder) is informed that he is now the owner of Castle Frankenstein per the will of his great-grandfather, Baron Beaufort von Frankenstein. Frederick has mixed emotions about travelling to Transylvania to claim his inheritance: he is not only engaged to be married but has spent his whole life trying to distance himself from the insane experiments of his infamous grandfather, Victor. Frederick says goodbye to his fiance Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) and sets off for the castle. Once in his family’s village, he meets Igor (pronounced Eye-gore) (Marty Feldman), grandson of Victor’s hunchbacked assistant (“Of course, the rates have gone up.”), the beautiful lab assistant Inga (Teri Garr), and housekeeper Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). Little by little, the old family obsession gets him & Frederick ends up creating a monster (Peter Boyle); hilarity then ensues.
Review/Commentary: By the early 1970′s, Mel Brooks had made a name for himself as one of the leading comedy writers in television. In the ’50′s, he had been the head writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, the precursor of Saturday Night Live; in the ’60′s, he was best known for creating the Don Adams vehicle Get Smart. In 1969, Brooks made the leap to feature films with The Producers, a farce about two Broadway producers putting on a musical about Hitler. The film was a modest success, but with his next feature, the hysterical Western satire Blazing Saddles, Brooks found his cinematic niche: creating affectionate parodies of established film genres. The stage was now set for Brooks to make what would become his personal favorite of all his films, and one of the best comedies of all time, Young Frankenstein.
The idea for Young Frankenstein was actually conceived by Gene Wilder. One night, after having just completed a film with Woody Allen, Wilder was lying in bed when he picked up a pad and spontaneously wrote two words: “Young Frankenstein.” He then proceeded to write 5 or 6 pages about what might happen to him if he were the grandson of the infamous Victor Frankenstein. The next day, Wilder called his friend and fellow filmmaker Mel Brooks and pitched the idea, which Brooks at first hated. After hours of discussion, he told Wilder “we’ll see;” the next day, Wilder was informed they had a deal with Columbia Pictures.
Brooks began butting heads with Columbia almost from the start. Columbia wanted the budget of the film to be almost half what Brooks needed to make it as he envisioned; not only that, the studio balked when Brooks insisted that the film be shot in black and white to recreate the feel of the classic Frankenstein films, of which he wanted Young Frankenstein to be an affectionate homage. By this time, black and white was considered outdated (film and television having only transitioned to color over the past 10 years or so) and Columbia executives worried about the film’s commercial potential if it were not released in color. At an impasse, Brooks got his agent to cancel the deal with Columbia and took the film to 20th Century Fox, who agreed with Brooks’s budget as well as releasing the film sans color.
The filming was long and arduous. Some long days stemmed from the cast not being able to keep themselves from cracking up on set, often due to many examples of ad-libbing (Frau Blucher’s offering of “varm” milk and Ovaltine, Igor’s moving/disappearing hump); some, however, resulted from Brooks’s insistence on getting every scene just right. The best example of this was the creation scene, which was shot as a 22-minute sequence (Wilder called the scene as originally shot “22 minutes of something terrible”), but which, over the course of a month in the cutting room, Brooks turned into a “12-minute masterpiece,” as Brooks himself put it.
Despite the difficulties, everyone on the set (even the occasional visitor) agreed it was one of the most fun shoots they had ever been on. Wilder has fondly recalled his time with Teri Garr and Peter Boyle on several occasions; Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn, two of Brooks’s more frequently used players throughout the 1970′s, have said Young Frankenstein was their favorite shoot. Several studio executives who stopped by to visit the set at one time or another had to be asked to leave when they were laughing so hard they could be heard off-camera.
One of the best things about Young Frankenstein is that it is a parody of the classic Universal Frankenstein films without subjecting them to ridicule. Brooks and Wilder carefully chose elements from the original films on which to build humorous scenes (the medical school lecture, the train ride, the stealing of the brain, the creation, the little girl, the police inspector with the wooden arm, the blind hermit) while also bringing to the table their own ideas (Frederick & Igor’s pronunciations of their names, the Monster’s enormous Schwanstuker, the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” dance number [which Wilder had to fight long and hard to convince Brooks to do]).
Special mention has to be made of Kenneth Strickfaden, the unsung genius of the Universal era. Strickfaden was the electrical engineer who designed the lab equipment used in every classic Universal Frankensteinfilm. Brooks was so enamored of the look of the machines, he tracked down Strickfaden, by then retired and living in an apartment over a garage housing his equipment, and rented the classic lab devices to give Young Frankenstein a truly authentic feel. By the look of the film alone, you would almost swear you’re watching one of the old Universals.
Young Frankenstein is Mel Brooks’s favorite film of among all those he completed, and it is by far the most critically acclaimed, having been nominated for 2 Academy Awards, 2 Golden Globes, and a WGA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The American Film Institute placed it at #13 on its list of the 100 greatest film comedies. Brooks has even turned it into a hit Broadway musical. If you’re a fan of classic horror films, or classic comedy, or both, you really need to check out Young Frankenstein…
Check out Aaron Hammonds’ blog Aaron’s Movie Madness where he reviews his favorite movies.
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