Sorry for the post being a tad late, life has been busy, and some of it actually in a good way. (The root canals while required were less fun.)

I have a general rule with both Mel Brooks and Wood Allen movies, the less they appear the funnier the film turns out to be. Young Frankenstein is my favorite of the films directed by Mel Brooks. The majority of the credit I feel would have to go to star and writer Gene Wilder.

Wilder’s satire of the Universal Frankenstein movies could only have been written by someone who truly cherished those classic bits of monster cinema. The conceit of the movie is that the original five Universal Frankenstein movies all happened, and this is the story that follows, albeit a little late as it is a late 70’s film.

This movie is funny and fun, but it really comes into its own if you have seen the original films. There are loving touches here and there like Easter eggs for the true fans.

The story is about Victor Frankenstein’s great-grandson Fredrick and his encounter with his family tradition of flesh golem building. He is helped by Igor (Eye-gor) played to perfection by Marty Feldman and a blonde bouncy lab assistance Inga, played by a sex kittenish Terri Garr. Kenneth Mars steals a number of scenes as the chief of police whose accent is so thick often no one understands him.

Filmed in black and white with very little in the way of special effects, this is a comedy that doesn’t requires gross out humor to achieve its effect. (Though at least one scene is, shall we say, no longer socially acceptable.)

This is one of my favorite films and the timeing of watching it could not have been better