r. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder) is the grandson of the infamous Baron Victor, whose research into animating dead tissue led to the creation of a murderous creature. An American, he rejects the legacy of his ancestor, pronouncing his name "Fronkensteen" and preferring to be known for what he calls his own "small contributions to science." Nevertheless, a lecture hall demonstration, involving an unfortunate volunteer, reveals Frankenstein as a man with dangerous reserves of aggression—possibly due to frustration over a fiancee (Kahn) with an aversion to physical contact.
Everything changes when Frankenstein inherits his grandfather's castle in Transylvania. It is there that he meets the chatty hunchback Igor (Feldman), the beautiful blond lab assitant Inga (Garr) and the sinister housekeeper Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). It is also there that he discovers his grandfather's dusty old journal, which provides detailed instructions for the creation of life. Infected by the family madness, he cries out: "It! Can! Be! Done!" while lightning flashes in perfect melodramatic counterpoint.
Alas, Igor errs by obtaining the donor brain from an abnormal subject. The resulting creature (Boyle) is a lurching inarticulate hulk who flies into fits of violence at every opportunity. Escaping into the countryside, the creature finds himself hunted and hounded, until an unfortunate visit to the home of a blind hermit (Gene Hackman).
The only hope of a happy resolution? An untested experimental procedure with strange consequences for both the monster and the genius who created him. ...
A marvelous monster of a comedy
From the very first moment of its release, this parody of the Universal Studios monster films of the early 1930s was hailed as a triumph. It is still remembered as entirely a Mel Brooks creation. In point of fact, the project was initiated, and the first drafts of the script completed, by the other comic genius, Gene Wilder. Brooks, who joined the project as a hired gun, worked on later drafts and made contributions, but he also fought hard to remove some of Wilder's most memorable sequences, including the shameless use of old jokes like the hunchback who says "walk this way" and the classic scene where monster and creator perform a mangled duet of "Puttin' on the Ritz."
The minimal credit posterity's afforded Wilder may rankle, but the completed work remains a marvel of ensemble acting. There is no one player who dominates every scene: Every major player milks the lunacy for all it's worth. As "Dr. Fronkensteen," who would deny his own heritage, Wilder burlesques the heroic overacting of so many early horror movies to present a mad doctor very much aware that he's playing for the back row. As the monster, Peter Boyle captures all the humor potential of a big stupe things keep happening to, without sacrificing any of the character's anguished pathos. As the beauteous lab assistant Inga, who thinks a roll in the hay consists of literally rolling back and forth across hay, Teri Garr is sexy, smart and perpetually disconcerted. As "Eye-gor," the cheerful hunchback whose deformity regularly shifts position, popeyed Brit Marty Feldman channels not only every lurching lab assistant ever filmed but Groucho Marx as well. As the insufferably germanic Der Inspector, whose monocle sits uselessly in the same eye covered by a patch, Kenneth Mars is just plain insane.
The late Madeline Kahn is terrific as another specimen in her career gallery of comically insufferable women, Leachman is even better as Frau Blucher, a housekeeper so sinister that the mere mention of her name drives horses to rearing, and an almost unrecognizable Gene Hackman is a film highlight as the blind hermit who should never have been allowed to serve dinner. It's an astounding cast, in retrospect, and the quality of their work together is best gauged by how many of them (Boyle, Garr and Feldman certainly; Wilder, Mars and Kahn arguably) gave or at least equalled their best comic performances in this film.
The film's look is a large part of the joke. The gorgeous black-and-white photography, and the gothic sets, are not parodies of the Frankenstein films of the 1930s; they're eerie recreations. Indeed, the laboratory equipment is in large part the same equipment director James Whale used in his original productions. Even with all the lunacy on display, those who grew up on repeated television broadcasts of the original Universal pictures have no trouble recognizing the result as a dedicated labor of love.
The DVD includes a number of scenes removed from the final cut; they're interesting, and amusing, but none of them really work, and some are interminable. They were wise excisions. If any "director's cut" of the future ever splices them back in, it should be shunned as brutally as humanity shuns the monster himself.
