Director: Mel Brooks
Writers: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Mary Shelley
Photography: Gerald Hirschfeld
Music: John Morris
Editor: John C. Howard
Cast: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman, Richard Haydn, Mel Brooks, Danny Goldman
Young Frankenstein is so scrupulously faithful to the 1930s Universal franchise that it fairly fits itself into the canon itself. You must start with the 1931 Frankenstein and 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, of course. But then I say it’s your choice: the star-studded 1939 Son of Frankenstein (Boris Karloff! Bela Lugosi! Basil Rathbone!) or this affectionate send-up. It boasts a luminous black & white palette, old-fashioned wipes from one scene to the next, and arguably cowriter Gene Wilder’s greatest single performance. It comes with all the trimmings too, including the little girl, the bride, the blind man, pitchforks, torches, elaborate mechanical wind-up law enforcement out of Peter Sellers, and more.
Wilder is Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced fronk-un-steen in a running gag), grandson of the mad scientist Victor (renamed Henry in the old movies for some reason). Frederick is a professor of human anatomy and biology trying to live down his grandfather’s crimes, constantly needled by his students. Wilder, as ever, and perhaps more so here, is a paradox of style, a quiet-mannered player who uses off-beat pauses, the position of his head, and the volume of his speaking voice to convey great stores of molten angst, rage, and depression, which erupt in calibrated, pitch-perfect sobbing rants. The ongoing, never-ending, exhausting battle over the pronunciation of his name is just a foretaste of what’s to come with the driven, neurotic, obsessed fool Wilder has made of Dr. Frankenstein.
Young Frankenstein is so scrupulously faithful to the 1930s Universal franchise that it fairly fits itself into the canon itself. You must start with the 1931 Frankenstein and 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, of course. But then I say it’s your choice: the star-studded 1939 Son of Frankenstein (Boris Karloff! Bela Lugosi! Basil Rathbone!) or this affectionate send-up. It boasts a luminous black & white palette, old-fashioned wipes from one scene to the next, and arguably cowriter Gene Wilder’s greatest single performance. It comes with all the trimmings too, including the little girl, the bride, the blind man, pitchforks, torches, elaborate mechanical wind-up law enforcement out of Peter Sellers, and more.
Wilder is Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced fronk-un-steen in a running gag), grandson of the mad scientist Victor (renamed Henry in the old movies for some reason). Frederick is a professor of human anatomy and biology trying to live down his grandfather’s crimes, constantly needled by his students. Wilder, as ever, and perhaps more so here, is a paradox of style, a quiet-mannered player who uses off-beat pauses, the position of his head, and the volume of his speaking voice to convey great stores of molten angst, rage, and depression, which erupt in calibrated, pitch-perfect sobbing rants. The ongoing, never-ending, exhausting battle over the pronunciation of his name is just a foretaste of what’s to come with the driven, neurotic, obsessed fool Wilder has made of Dr. Frankenstein.
Wilder’s version could well have roots beyond the Universal pictures and into the original 1818 novel by Mary Shelley. I don’t know how deeply he researched the lore. But the hysteria here is coming from somewhere and it goes well beyond the “It’s alive!” turns in the old movies, though Wilder certainly indulges his own version of that. It’s just done more like the finishing flourish to an epic soliloquy, all keyed around life, Life, LIFE. Wilder plays everything about Frankenstein perfectly: his strutting vanity, his primal screams, his damn foolishness, never right about anything.
Wilder is well supported by cast and script. I love what they do with Igor, the hunchback assistant, played by Marty Feldman with a lot of knowing looks through the fourth wall. His name is another field for battle here—in response to Fronk-un-steen he insists on Eye-gor. In another running gag, the hump on his back moves from one side to another and sounds hollow when knocked. Feldman overplays it some, with his expressive pair of roving eyeballs, but he also grounds it with his cynical understanding of ongoing situations. Peter Boyle as the monster is similarly built for the part, reminding us that much like Karloff all he has to do really is just lumber around in tight quarters and grunt a lot.
Teri Garr remains delightful as Frankenstein’s lab assistant and bubbly sex babe, in a role that has not perhaps aged particularly well. Madeline Kahn, as Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth, is similarly reduced to mostly a sort of lampoon of a sex object, which means still mostly a sex object, however knowing or enlightened. One running gag, for example, is that both are impressed and easily manipulated by big dongs. I see the problems, but I also like the way Garr and Kahn handle them, playing them off in ways that don’t feel unliberated—it’s probably something generational (or genderwise?) on my part, but both work well for me.
Gene Hackman is the lonely blind man in the forest who invites the monster in, gives it soup and a cigar, and opens himself to friendship with it. Hackman plays this small part so perfectly that I must insist it’s one of his best, or maybe just a great example of what Hackman could do so well, which is fit himself into anything. His big serious roles, e.g., The French Connection or Unforgiven, are one thing, but I like him in his quieter roles off the main action, in The Conversation, Another Woman, or Night Moves, or even Hoosiers. Here he’s doing a familiar blind-man’s slapstick gag, spilling hot soup on the monster’s lap instead of in his bowl, or terrifying it with flame lighting a cigar. Hackman is unrecognizable in long matted hair and beard. It’s a neat self-enclosed scene and a tidy hark to a memorable scene in Bride of Frankenstein.
So it was honestly great to get another look at Young Frankenstein, probably my favorite Mel Brooks movie, though I haven’t seen them all. I think the only other picture of his that’s even close is Blazing Saddles, from the year before, which is another kettle of fish to fry and in many ways a very different movie, though both (and many others of his, some I haven’t seen) were intended chiefly as parodies of movie cliches. I know some who argue for The Producers too. But I have to go with Young Frankenstein as the best Mel Brooks movie.
Wilder is well supported by cast and script. I love what they do with Igor, the hunchback assistant, played by Marty Feldman with a lot of knowing looks through the fourth wall. His name is another field for battle here—in response to Fronk-un-steen he insists on Eye-gor. In another running gag, the hump on his back moves from one side to another and sounds hollow when knocked. Feldman overplays it some, with his expressive pair of roving eyeballs, but he also grounds it with his cynical understanding of ongoing situations. Peter Boyle as the monster is similarly built for the part, reminding us that much like Karloff all he has to do really is just lumber around in tight quarters and grunt a lot.
Teri Garr remains delightful as Frankenstein’s lab assistant and bubbly sex babe, in a role that has not perhaps aged particularly well. Madeline Kahn, as Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth, is similarly reduced to mostly a sort of lampoon of a sex object, which means still mostly a sex object, however knowing or enlightened. One running gag, for example, is that both are impressed and easily manipulated by big dongs. I see the problems, but I also like the way Garr and Kahn handle them, playing them off in ways that don’t feel unliberated—it’s probably something generational (or genderwise?) on my part, but both work well for me.
Gene Hackman is the lonely blind man in the forest who invites the monster in, gives it soup and a cigar, and opens himself to friendship with it. Hackman plays this small part so perfectly that I must insist it’s one of his best, or maybe just a great example of what Hackman could do so well, which is fit himself into anything. His big serious roles, e.g., The French Connection or Unforgiven, are one thing, but I like him in his quieter roles off the main action, in The Conversation, Another Woman, or Night Moves, or even Hoosiers. Here he’s doing a familiar blind-man’s slapstick gag, spilling hot soup on the monster’s lap instead of in his bowl, or terrifying it with flame lighting a cigar. Hackman is unrecognizable in long matted hair and beard. It’s a neat self-enclosed scene and a tidy hark to a memorable scene in Bride of Frankenstein.
So it was honestly great to get another look at Young Frankenstein, probably my favorite Mel Brooks movie, though I haven’t seen them all. I think the only other picture of his that’s even close is Blazing Saddles, from the year before, which is another kettle of fish to fry and in many ways a very different movie, though both (and many others of his, some I haven’t seen) were intended chiefly as parodies of movie cliches. I know some who argue for The Producers too. But I have to go with Young Frankenstein as the best Mel Brooks movie.
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