Young Frankenstein, written by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, starring the latter and directed by the former - 9.4 out of 10

Young Frankenstein, written by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, starring the latter and directed by the former

9.4 out of 10

This formidable comedy is based on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the script has been nominated for an Academy Award and the film is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list - https://www.listchallenges.com/new-york-times-best-1000-movies-ever-made/list/25 as one of the most amusing features you can watch…

Gene Wilder is fabulous as Doctor Frederick Frankenstein – he has a certain manner in pronouncing it, up to a point, and this causes one of the multiple scenes of mirth, when he meets with Igor aka equally outstanding Marty Feldman and the latter responds in kind…as in, all right, if you play games with the pronunciation of a name that we know so well around here…there we go, this is no longer Igor, but something like Yagor maybe…

He receives the testament of his famous grandfather, Victor von Frankenstein, from a box…but it was no easy thing, to get it from the cadaver that would not allow it to be extracted, even from the ‘dead hands ‘so to say – and the young neurosurgeon travels all the way to Transylvania – which is right where we live…well, nearby – and he would at one stage address a scientific gathering at the Academic Society of…Bucharest, where we are right now.

The humor is pervasive and throughout the trip we have moments when the announcements are intelligible, then the surgeon asks a boy about the ‘Transylvania Station’ as if there would be one railway station for a whole region, like say for the whole of Mississippi, and in the first place there is the same unintelligible gibberish, which is then replaced by ‘would like a shine for your shoes, sir’…the boy knew English all along.

At the ‘Transylvania Station’, Igor aka Marty Feldman is waiting, offers to take the bags, but when he sees that one if really heavy, he takes the light luggage and then invites the guest to the vehicle, which is a cart with a…Damsel inside, the florid, attractive Inga aka Teri Garr, who is supposed to and will be the assistant of the surgeon and will keep him company all the way to the sinister, farfetched and far away castle, where the scary Frau Blucher awaits- whenever her name is uttered, the horses jump and scream…indeed, Igor is naughty that he comes out the door, after all are inside, to say Blucher for the tenth time and see the animals agitated and scared…

While the new owner is accommodating, he hears a violin somewhere and decides to investigate with his assistant – how else – and physical comedy follows, as he is thrown by a secret door out and back into the room a few times, then he is caught and almost crushed in between, until they reach the secret library and then they would pursue the magic, supernatural operations that are destined to give life to a senseless being, following the recipe, the discoveries of the ancestor who has written everything in a book…

They select the freshly buried body of a giant, but the journey back to the ‘laboratory’ is not without agitation, for they slip and part of the cadaver are out, just as an agent of the ‘Transylvania polizei’ is walking about, saying he knows everyone, but Frederick Frankenstein is unfamiliar and they have to communicate with the good doctor pretending that one of the hands of the dead man is actually his, shaking it with the agent who remarks on how cold it is – dead cold we can say with insight – and then they put the fellow on the table and proceed to give him a brilliant brain, kept in one of the jars in the pantry presumably…

Only poor, helpless Igor slips and the good brain is lost and he has to replace it with what he would later call the organ of someone Abby Normal – alas, it was labeled ‘do not use under any circumstances, Abnormal brain’ – Igor being an interesting combination of someone very clever, shrewd, funny, but also portrayed as having something on the back – the doctor says upon their acquaintance that he is a surgeon and can do something about that thing on his back, but when he sees that the man does not acknowledge anything wrong – what thing on the back? – says never mind, only to ask later – but your thing was on the other side, as in the hump was leaning left and now it is to the right and in deference to sensitivity and perhaps politeness, he again retrains himself and stops in his tracks…

Meanwhile, the ‘natives are restless’ as in they have a reunion and show incipient nationalism – making us think of Trump’s rallies, the idiot that keeps calling the Covid 19 threat ‘the Chinese virus’ in his trademark distancing from anything that can be hi fault…when asked, he says he ‘is perfect’ they have done nothing wrong and takes no responsibility, even if he had acted as a cretin in this pandemic, which he denied as a hoax invented by democrats, which will drop to zero in days and miraculously disappear…only a few weeks ago that was his take on what is clearly as bad as it gets…

The ‘monster’ is created and he attacks when he sees fire, he is free to roam around and this is where we have again some hilarious scenes, such as the ones where he meets the ‘Blind Man’ aka legendary, Titan of cinema Gene Hackman, an isolated hermit who had prayed God for someone to visit and break his too long solitude and when the Creature arrives, the ascetic figure is overjoyed and puts out drink, only he breaks the can from which the visitor is supposed to toast, then he offers him one of the two cigars he had saved for this momentous celebration, but as he cannot see, he puts fire to the finger of the poor guest, who runs from this home in aggravation to meet with a child that he treats with kindness…

Doctor Frederick Frankenstein says to his team, Igor and Inga, that he would have to go into the cell where his Creation is kept and stay with him no matter what, come Hell or High Water, for he has to solve this drama and he needs to consider self-sacrifice for science and more to the same ‘motivational’ but oh so jocular purpose and then adds with gravitas that they must keep the door close, once he gets in with the so dangerous character, no matter what he says, if he begs, shouts, cries or orders to be allowed outside, they must still keep the door locked and once he is inside, within ten seconds or less, he starts moaning and asking to be free again, asking for mother or anyway taking a immensely amusing stand…also, when he insisted on being trapped with the Godzilla, Igor says with brilliant comical zest…

‘It was nice working with you’ as in you will die in the next minute, you poor lunatic