Wayback Wednesday: Young Frankenstein

It’s Halloween, and if scares aren’t your thing, then you can still get your Halloween on and enjoy some great laughs with “Young Frankenstein”, directed by Mel Brooks and starring Gene Wilder.

A spoof of the classic Universal horror films, the movie is shot entirely in black and white and features Wilder as Frederick Frankenstein (Fronk-en-steen), an American doctor trying to forget his family’s sordid past.  After getting a visit from a lawyer, Frederick learns that he has inherited his family’s castle in Transylvania.  Leaving his fiancé (the always delightful Madeline Kahn), he travels to Transylvania where he is met by his grandfather’s servant Igor (Eye-gor), played by Marty Feldman and his lab assistant Inga (Teri Garr).  Before long, Frederick is on the trail of his grandfather’s quest to play God and has created his own monster (Peter Boyle). 

All of the performances are perfect.  In addition to the above mentioned actors, Iowa-born Cloris Leachman is hilarious as the stiff Frau Blucher (Neigh!!!) and Gene Hackman is almost unrecognizable as the lonely blind man.   Wilder also had an Iowa connection – he was a 1955 graduate of the University of Iowa.

I can’t think of a better comedy pairing than Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks (Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor would be a close runner-up).  “Young Frankenstein” was actually Wilder’s idea, and he and Brooks were nominated for an Academy Award for the script.  Madeline Kahn and Cloris Leachman were nominated for Golden Globes for their performances. 

This is probably my second favorite Wilder performance (after Willy Wonka). This was the third pairing of Wilder and Brooks, after “The Producers” and “Blazing Saddles”.  In fact, Wilder only agreed to do “Blazing Saddles” (he was filling in for Gig Young who was fired on the first day after collapsing from symptoms of alcohol withdrawl) if Brooks would agree to work with him on “Young Frankenstein”.

If you haven’t seen “Young Frankenstein”, you are in for a wonderful treat.  If you have seen it, then it’s time to watch it again.  I just shared it with my ten-year-old, and the movie holds up really well, despite being almost 40-years-old.