Young Frankenstein (1974)
Thursday, April 10, 8:30 PM Opening Night!
SPECIAL GUEST: MIKE FENTON
A Classic Comedy...

As funny as the film version of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN was when it was initially premiered 34 years ago, I think it's even funnier today. But how can that be since it's the same film now as it was then?  Well, the film itself may not have changed but we certainly have. If you've recently ventured out to see any of the comedies currently being served at the local Bijous, you're well aware that ninety-nine percent of them are pretty pallid, limp affairs, heavy on slapstick, short on style and basically devoid of anything resembling that wondrous quality known as “wit.” So it's no wonder that when one now sees this great movie comedy directed by Mel Brooks, it's especially apparent that, oh, how lucky we have Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman , Teri Garr and the unbilled Gene Hackman working under the direction of Brooks in this endlessly entertaining spoof.

It has an interesting history: Wilder wrote the original script, inspired he says by two movies which caught his eye about the same time:  YOUNG WINSTON about Churchill, and an old film he'd seen on television, YOUNG TOM EDISON, about the famous inventor. A screenplay called YOUNG FRANKENSTIEN seemed to him a logical next step and with that he sat down to write.  Mel Brooks came into the project later; after Mel agreed to direct a film version, he added some uniquely Brooksian humor to the script, thus they shared screen credit as writers,  going on to receive an Academy Award nominations in 1974 for “best screenplay adapted from other material.” That other material, of course, is Mary Shelley's dark and goosebump-inducing 1818 novel “Frankenstein,” about a doctor, quite cuckoo, who locks himself in a lab and, from scratch, makes a monster.

This 1974 movie spoof of the Frankenstein (er, “Franken-steen”) legend constitutes, in my opinion, the very best movie Brooks has made to date, certainly the classiest of them all, delivering it's hilarity without ever resorting to the kind of school-level humor which has over the years increasingly became a Brooks trademark. It is also infinitely superior on every level to the current Broadway musical version, and if there's any drawback to the film, it's only that once you've seen it, you'll never be able to again watch Fred Astaire sing and dance to Irving Berlin's “Puttin' on the Ritz” without having the image pop into your mind of Peter Boyle in this movie, playing the monster, nattily dressed in a tux, and awkwardly warbling about being “dressed up like a million dollar trouper…trying hard to look like Gary Cooper….sooo-per dooo-per.”

1974. 106 minutes. Producer:  Michael Gruskoff.   Director: Mel Brooks.  Screenplay: Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks. Cinematography: Gerald Hirschfeld. Production design: Dake Hennesy. Editor: John C. Howard.  Music: John Morris.  Costumes:  Dorothy Jeakins. Casting: Jane Feinberg, Mike Fenton. Cast: GENE WILDER, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Kenneth Mars, Richard Haydn and (unbilled) Gene Hackman.  Released by 20th Century-Fox.