Young Frankenstein (1974)

In 1974, some 43 years after Universal released its first Frankenstein film, Mel Brooks released a movie that gently, even reverently, spoofed it and its sequels. (Shocking reality check: 1974 is closer to 1931 than it is to 2021!) Young Frankenstein is, quite frankly, a masterpiece. It manages to evoke all the main aspects of the Karloff movies, riffs on most of the beloved scenes from those earlier movies, and reminds us why we love them so much. (Because we do, don’t we??)

The Plot. Young Frankenstein is a pastiche of key scenes and themes from Universal’s Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). Set in the modern day (well, modernish), Gene Wilder plays Frederick Frankenstein, the grandson of the man who created the original monster. Frederick, a successful surgeon, has just inherited his grandfather’s castle in Transylvania, where he arrives by train.(Note that the essential elements of this plot set-up are borrowed directly from Son of Frankenstein, including even Gene Wilder’s mustache, which mimics that of Basil Rathbone in Son.)

With his assistants Igor (Marty Feldman) and a very delectable Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick is ineluctably is drawn to continue his grandfather’s experiments, and before long he creates a monster that subsequently escapes and wreaks havoc in the village. Although there are a number of typical Mel Brooks plot twists, the main elements of the earlier movies are all there: The basic creation sequence, the laboratory, the bad blood between Igor and the creature, the angry villagers, the little girl with the flowers, the blind hermit, the wooden-armed police inspector, Dr. Frankenstein’s wife, and on and on.

The Monster. Frankenstein’s creature is played by Peter Boyle, who’s generally made up as Karloff appeared in the Universal movies. Like Karloff’s monster, Boyle’s creature doesn’t speak (except at the very end of the movie, as a gag), and has to express himself with his eyes, face, and gestures. Boyle is masterful at this, in much the same way Karloff had been. Boyle’s version of the monster is somewhat less scary than Karloff’s. With a balding head and a bewildered face, Boyle’s creature is in some ways the straight man of the movie.

The Atmosphere. Clearly Mel Brooks had set out to capture the look and feel of those old Universal pictures, and just as clearly he succeeded. Overcoming resistance from the studio, Brooks had the movie filmed in black and white, just as those 1930s films had been. Much of the story takes place in Frankenstein castle, replete with cobwebs, dark corners, and secret passageways. We see a graveyard (very similar to the one in the opening of 1931’s Frankenstein), and a village like the ones that appeared in the Universal films. There is fog, lightning storms, horses (“Blucher!”), moonlit nights, and wolves. It seems that nothing was left out.

Indeed, Young Frankenstein even features the same laboratory equipment from the 1931 original. I don’t mean it just looks the same; I mean, Mel Brooks got his hands on the very same props. Evidently all the equipment had been stored in the garage of Ken Strickfaden — the Universal props guy who’d designed it in 1931. Strickfaden was getting on in years by 1974, but he was game for the project.

General Comments. If you’ve seen the three Karloff Frankensteins, you owe it to yourself to watch this paean to them. You’ll appreciate the in-jokes, and in some ways you might even appreciate those old movies more as a result of this send-up.

But if you can’t find the time to watch the whole movie, at least watch this clip.

Tomorrow: Things go downhill a bit. We’ll go back to the Universal films, with their first post-Karloff Frankenstein movie: Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). You can watch it on YouTube, but I’m not sure it’s worth the $3.99 it’ll cost you.