Young Frankenstein

The moment, when it comes, has the certainty of comic genius. Young Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of the man who started it all – returns via train to his family home. As the train stops at the station, he sees a kid on the platform, lowers the window and asks, “Pardon me, boy; is this the Transylvania Station?”

It is, and Mel Brooks is in his area with “Young Frankenstein,” released in 1974, his most restricted and visually inventive film (it also happens is, hands down, hilarious). Frederick is a professor in a New York medical school, trying to stay away from the family name and giving funny demonstrations of the difference between voluntary and involuntary reflexes. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “He stabs himself in the process, dismisses the class and is visited by an ancient family retainer with his grandfather's will.”

Frankenstein quickly returns to Transylvania and the old family castle, where he is being waited on by the faithful houseboy Igor (Marty Feldman), the sensual lab assistant Inga (Teri Garr), and the mysterious housekeeper Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman), whose actual name makes horses to rear from fear. This professor has always rejected his grandfather’s medical tests as impossible, but he changes his mind after he finds a book titled How I Did It by Frederick Frankenstein. Next he decides to do a little grave-robbing and visit the local Brain Depository, and the Frankenstein family is back with the tests.

Ebert noted, “In his two best comedies, before this, “The Producers” and “Blazing Saddles,” Brooks revealed a rare comic anarchy. His movies weren’t just funny, they were aggressive and subversive, making us laugh even when we really should have been offended. (Explaining this process, Brooks once loftily declared, “My movies rise below vulgarity.”) “Young Frankenstein” is as funny as we expect a Mel Brooks comedy to be, but it’s more than that: It shows artistic growth and a more sure-handed control of the material by a director who once seemed willing to do literally anything for a laugh.” It’s more confident and less winded.

That’s fairly because the very genre he’s satirizing gives him a strong narrative he can play against. Brooks focuses on James Whale’s “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein,” the first the most influential and the second probably the best of the 1930s Hollywood horror movies. Brooks uses carefully done black-and-white photography that captures the essence of the earlier films. Ebert said, “He uses old-fashioned visual devices and obvious special effects (the train ride is a study in manufactured studio scenes). He adjusts the music to the right degree of squeakiness. And he even rented the original “Frankenstein” laboratory, with its zaps of electricity, high-voltage special effects, and elevator platform to intercept lightning bolts.”

The movie is a tribute to a style and not just the material (as Paul Morrissey’s awful “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein”). It looks right, which makes it funnier. Ironically, it then works on a couple of levels: first as comedy, and then as a strangely moving story in its own way. A lot of the credit for that goes to the performances of the late Gene Wilder, as young Frankenstein, and Peter Boyle as the monster. They act largely when it’s required, but they also give a huge amount of detail and control. Boyle somehow manages to be hilarious and pathetic at the same time.

Ebert said, “There are set pieces in the movie that deserve comparison with the most famous scenes in “The Producers.” Demonstrating that he has civilized his monster, for example, Frankenstein and the creature do a soft-shoe number in black tie and tails.” Walking in the woods, the monster meets up with a poor, blind monk, played by Gene Hackman (hilarious), who gives hospitality and ends up scalding, burning, and scaring the poor being half to death.

There are also the necessary town meetings, lynch mobs, police investigations, laboratory experiments, love scenes, and a gladly vulgar preoccupation with a main area of the monster’s stitched-together body. Ebert said, “From its opening title (which manages to satirize “Frankenstein” and “Citizen Kane” at the same time) to its closing, uh, refrain, “Young Frankenstein” is not only a Mel Brooks movie but also a loving commentary on our love-hate affairs with monsters.” This time, the monster even gets to have a little love-hate affair of his own.

For a Mel Brooks movie where it spoofs the Universal Frankenstein trilogy, I have to say that this is one of the funniest parodies ever made. This is back at a time before all parody films decided to take the zeitgeist route and just cram in everything that is popular at the time. If you haven’t seen this film, and want to see a classic parody that is legitimately funny and looks like real, genuine effort was put in, definitely see this one. I might even say that this is one of the favorite comedies/parodies ever.

Alright everyone, look out next Monday when I look at another classic movie for this year’s “Halloween Month.”