Young Frankenstein 1974
I never saw this movie, though I remember the commercials when it came out. It gets pretty good reviews, so I was expecting something like Blazing Saddles. But Young Frankenstein is as much a tribute to 1930’s horror movies as it is a satire of them. Most noticeable is that they used black and white photography. That makes the movie look very vintage. I was thinking that some of the mob scenes could have been taken from old movies. Everything just has that rich, classic look. The gags don’t come that fast. Often Brooks will throw in tons of jokes and hope some of them stick. But here they are few and far between, but usually pretty good. His trademark Nazis show up with a performance borrowed (and made unique) by the same actor as in The Producers. But there are no Jewish jokes and Mel Brooks doesn’t even appear.
The focus instead is on the story which is incredibly faithful to the originals. The DVD extras missed an opportunity by not borrowing some snippets from the original Frankenstein movies to do a side-by-side comparison. Even some of the lab equipment came from the original. Also the performances are very good. All of the principle actors are doing some of the best work of their careers, including Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman (who gets almost all of the wisecracks), Madeline Kahn (maybe her best role, though it is small), and Teri Garr (who is funny and looks fantastic). Peter Boyle (the father from Everybody Loves Raymond) is a very good monster, and even Gene Hackman brings amazing credibility to a bit part as a blind hermit.
The biggest complaint I have is that the movie just isn’t that funny. Feldman has some good lines, and there is some funny situational stuff, but this isn’t so much a satire as an exaggeration of the original material. Cloris Leachman as Frau Blucher is not terribly different than the roles she is parodying. There is some subtlety in play that I think would get funnier on repeated viewings, and I found myself laughing more watching the replays in the “making of” feature than I did during the movie. Speaking of the DVD extras, though they are good, they are still lacking interviews with some key characters including Mel Brooks (though he apparently does a commentary track by himself), Peter Boyle, and Teri Garr, who should have all been available even if Feldman and Kahn have died. There are some alternate takes that are just as funny as the original, showing slightly different performances of the same material. Also there are deleted scenes, some funny ("intellectual conversation” between Wilder and Garr) and some terrible (reading of the will, Jack Spratt).
Anyway, this was a better movie than I expected even if it wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be. B+.
Written: 02 Jan 2012
Owned on: Blu-ray