Young Frankenstein

In October we will be celebrating the 100th birthday of one of the funniest filmmakers to have ever graced Hollywood: Mel Brooks. The man who tried to make bad taste a metaphor for his work was also instrumental in helping David Lynch prosper in film business thanks to producing his "Elephant Man" that got 8 Oscar nominations and gave Lynch plenty of benefit-of-the-doubt to do his own thing. We will finish our Brooks Sunday series with "Young Frankenstein" (1974).

Although it may not be his funniest film, lacking the sheer anything-goes bravado of its predecessor, Young Frankenstein is Brooks at his most consistent and artful. The laughs keep coming, the plot coheres and resolves, and the Universal horror-inspired visual style is maintained throughout. It’s a broad pastiche of Son of Frankenstein (1939), which gives a fine opportunity for Gene Wilder – as Frederick Fronkensteen – to practise his inimitable comic style of building up from slow-burn to hysteria. The comic set-pieces, such as Wilder and Peter Boyle (playing the Monster) performing ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’, are carefully integrated into the whole, which means that Marty Feldman’s breaking of the fourth wall seems a witty contrast rather than just part of a general madness.

The supporting cast has a lot of fun too, with Kenneth Mars standing out as Inspector Kemp, complete with prosthetic arm, and Cloris Leachman channelling her inner Mrs Danvers as Frau Blucher.

You should watch it for Gerald Hirschfeld’s glowing black-and-white cinematography and John Morris’s music, both of which capture the Universal style to perfection.

“It’s what used to be called a crazy comedy, and there hasn’t been this kind of craziness on the screen in years.” (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker)