Young Frankenstein
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“It’s pronounced ‘Fronkensteen’”
Overview
A pastiche of the 1931 Frankenstein film and its legacy, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s Young Frankenstein begs the question: what about Victor Frankenstein’s grandson who wants nothing to do with his forefathers’ mad science antics? Gene Wilder is that Dr. Frederick Frankenstein who inherits the family castle in Transylvania, making the acquaintance of the hunched servant Igor (Marty Feldman), the haunting housekeeper Frau Blüche (Cloris Leachman) and a young woman named Inga (Teri Garr) who soon becomes his assistant. Discovering his grandfather’s laboratory and reading through his notebooks, Frederick feels compelled to resume the family tradition and re-animate the next corpse he can find (with Peter Boyle as the Monster).
Why You Should See This Film
One of our favourite Mel Brooks parodies (he even considers it his best film), Young Frankenstein pokes fun at the countless adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel while lovingly embracing the mise en scène of the day by shooting entirely in black and white with period appropriate (for the ‘30s) titles, transitions, techniques and a score by Brooks' longtime composer John Morris. For us, it’s Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman’s (and the rest of the cast really) endless quotability, theatricality and silliness that really tickles our ribs the same way it did when we first saw it.
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