All the right movies. Now that brain that you gave me,
was it Hans Dellbrooks? No good.
Would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
And you won't be angry. I will not be angry.
Abby someone, Abby someone Abby who?
Abby normal. Abby normal.
I'm almost sure that was the name.
Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a 7 1/2 foot
long, 54 inch wide gorilla? A brilliant young surgeon
inherits his famous grandfather's Transylvanian
estate. Soon, Frederick Frankenstein
falls foul of the nonsensical Ravens of a lunatic mind and
brings a dead mute back to life. An incredibly big mute.
Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's lovingly crafted parody of the
Universal Frankenstein films became one of the funniest films
ever made. An imperfect homage that taught
Hollywood you can salute the genre and skewer it in the same
breath. My name is Luke and joining me
for a roll in the hay, Westie. I was going to make espresso.
And Matt? Popped the candle back.
All the right movies are in Transylvania, raising the
platform and giving our creation life.
Hi everyone, welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast on
classic and hit films that is only interested in the
preservation of life. Lovely.
We're telling the story of Hollywood one film at a time,
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A record holding comic juggernaut.
So we have the set of games at the ready, just in case it gets
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Yeah, I'll be normal. Stand by.
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Yes, absolutely. Quite a tomb we have in there.
All the original props are in there.
OK, so back to the show. Why are we talking about Young
Frankenstein now? This was my pick.
So it's a film that I always like to put never loved.
That is until we covered it on our double feature show when we
talked about this and Blaze and saddles a few years.
Back, yeah. A great show and the film just
clicked with me. While it was the overwhelming
winner for the show, for good reason all all three of us
picked it. Yes, we did, yeah.
And that's why we're talking about it now.
I just loved everything about it on that rewatch.
I was looking for an excuse to watch it again.
And honestly, once we wrapped on that show, I was looking forward
to doing a deep dive into the film immediately.
Right? So this has been a quite long
time coming. I think it really is one of the
greatest comedy films ever made. It's gag after gag, it's
incredible set design, homage to the classic Universal horror
tales of the 30s, and it includes, for my money, one of
the greatest comedy performances.
Wilder's Frederick Frankenstein is one of the best.
Yeah, it's. Incredible.
So incredibly excited about this one.
Now, Westie, you've said a dirty word in your time, haven't you?
One or two, I mean, wouldn't hold that against his, let's be
honest. But yeah, I mean, this, this is
a this is just a great film. Again, I've become more and more
fond of it as the years have gone on.
And just like you, I think it's just it was that double feature
episode that made us sit up. It existed, but I just thought
another pastiche on Frankenstein.
I look at the front cover of the DVD and I think, can I be
bothered to sit through this one?
It's about Brooks film, but it's so much more than that.
It's just it's a real appreciation of the period, a
real appreciation of the genre. It's a very intelligent film.
I think the comedy lands exactly where it needs to.
It's very considered, very carefully thought through.
It's definitely my favorite Mel Brooks film out of all 11 of
them I think I've seen. And I think it's because it's
the least Mel Brooks of all the Mel Brooks films.
And I think that's probably to its benefit and to his benefit
as well because he's this is a real collaboration with Gene
Welder. And I think this is very much a
Gene Wilder film is just as much as Mel Brooks.
It's very, very funny. It's very, very well paced.
I don't think there's a minute where I'm not entertained and
there's certainly not a minute where I have to wait for the
next laugh. I think they're just the lined
up beautifully, the lined up perfectly.
And I think if you're an appreciation of cinema,
especially the Universal Hollywood era, then this one's
definitely up there as an appreciation, definitely up
there as a great film. But yeah, I mean, there's so
many things to talk about with this I'm.
I'm really looking forward. To it yeah.
It's going to be great. Yeah.
Be great, yeah. And Matt darling.
Yeah. Surprised Love me.
Love me. Why are we talking about you and
Frankenstein that? Well, I've been aware of this
one from a kid really, because there's one my parents watched a
lot and watching it as a kid, it's very different watching it
as an adult, like as a kid, it was to say, all right, I
understand this character. I know what Frankenstein's
monster is, so that's great. And it looks like the old iconic
creature and that's great. Some of the jokes that they did
go over me head as a kid, I was more into the kind of slapstick
stuff. Effing With Ego is really funny,
but it is one where the more you come back to it, the more of the
jokes you get and the funniest gets and it's just always was
being up there for me. I think it deserves its status.
As he said, it's a double feature winner, quite rightly.
I mean, I think probably said this when we did it.
It's just got a level of sophistication that Blason
Saddles doesn't have. And I think as Wesley says, I
think a lot of that's down to Gene Wyler.
So we'll get in all of that and it should just be an absolute
battle of us to get into. Yes, yes, it certainly will.
I can't wait for this one. Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. So Young Frankenstein was Co
written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, based on Mary Shelley's
legendary 19th century novel and directed by Brooks himself,
produced by Michael Gruskov for Gruskov Fincher Films and
distributed by 20th Century Fox in the theaters on the 15th of
December 1974. Shot exclusively on sets of Fox
Studios in LA, it stars Gene Wilder as the good doctor, and
he's supported by Madeleine Kahn, Marty Feldman, Terry Garr,
Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Kenneth Mars.
Wow, Yeah, what a what a cast. Incredible.
Cast. Yeah, we're headed to the
classroom with one doctor, Frederick Frankenstein, who is
teaching a master class in the central nervous system and
getting incredibly annoyed by one of his students.
The beginning We opened with a long, drawn out
credit sequence slowly pushing into Castle Frankenstein, where
some of Baron von Frankenstein's personal effects are taken from
his tomb. A glorious transition.
And we're with the brilliant surgeon Frederick Frankenstein
Wester, you're starting us off. Yeah, how good are the titles
before I get into this? Incredible.
How good is that 20th Century Fox logo as well?
Absolutely amazing. Sets the tone lovely.
The music's absolutely brilliant over the opening titles.
But this is still, I mean, apart from Raiders, I think this is
probably one of my favourite introductions to character ever.
I just absolutely love how straight while there is playing
this and it's just all the information is coming out of
this very scientific, you know, the medulla oblongata, just the
way he pronounces things, it's just automatically funny.
And we've got this, you know, this jumped up kid who's played
by Danny Goldman who just stands up and he's got Frankenstein.
He turns around to Frankenstein that close up and he spins
around and it's a beautiful kind of soft focus and that classic
light. And he's just straight away, you
know exactly where you are with it.
But Danny Goldman's great. I mean he's such a Dick, but
he's so so brilliant. But he's the voice of Brainy
Smurf from The Smurfs. He did like really 30 odd
episodes of it all. I know that voice from
somewhere. Wow.
As we're going, he's asking the questions and we talked about
the nervous system, we're talking about the brain, we're
talking about really intense things, and it's still pretty
funny. And then the Wheeling Mr.
Hilltop, and you think with the the little tap, with the gong.
And I just love that. It's just so unnecessarily funny
and it just wheels him in and you just think, well, what
what's going to happen with this guy?
And he stood up and he's like, raise, raise your left knee.
That comes up. And then you just have this real
runoff from Wilder where he's just rattling off all of this
dialogue and it's so incredibly introgate and he's just so
believable. Is this really urgent?
Who knows what he's talking about?
And it's like he's almost forgetting to be funny.
And then all of a sudden you get you filthy rock and yellow son
of a bitch. Where's that come from, Mr.
Hilltop his face and it didn't work and you just again and then
he's just straight back to playing it straight and bunk the
reaction, the nerve impulse and then he's like your mother
grabbing bastard and then again comes from absolutely no way
just them two moments. Absolutely fantastic.
The wheel Hilltop out he's don't forgive him an extra dollar.
Love that little line. Just so so brilliant.
And he just and then he's answering the questions he's
winding up and then you just get one of the most Gene Wilder
moments in the film, I think for me.
And he's got hit it hard and know exactly what you're going
with this character and just this really explosive moment
when he's talking about his his relationship with Frankenstein
and he's a kook and he's just starting to scream and he picks
that scalpel up and you know something's going to be going
wrong with it. And he's just got over the top
and lost his mind. And the only thing that concerns
me is the preservation of life. And it's great into the leg.
And I buckle every time that goes in there because it's that.
And he just looks and he's like, and he takes his hand.
You think that's not stuck. It takes down but it's just.
It's just stuck. In his thigh.
Hand back, right and then the leg goes back over just just
continues and it's like class dismissed.
It's just, it's great. It's hilarious.
I love that he really sticking to this Frankenstein bit.
Even when he's got a scalpel in his thigh, he's still not.
He's not budging. Hearts and kidneys are tinker
toys, are you? Talking about the worm or the
spaghetti? Well, actually there's a lovely
little reference buried in this scene, and as you've just
mentioned it, there was the Frederick mentions, an
experiment by Darwin where a worm was preserved in fluid
until it came to life. Yeah, it's not a fictional
reference. It's actually mentioned in Mary
Shelley's foreword to her novel Frankenstein, Right.
And the Darwin in question is Erasmus Darwin, who was the
grandfather of the much more ballyhooed Charles Darwin,
Right? OK.
This is in real world which. Makes it funny though.
Doesn't make it funny. The level of detail, no, it
really isn't to the humor. So he's got the will, he knows
he's got an inheritance to score for, so he sets off on this
train journey and it's he when we get, I think, 2 of the finest
comic support and performances I've ever seen in my life, I
mean one after another. I mean, first of all, Madeleine
Khan. When is she not the best thing
in the film? That answer's.
Never. She's always the best thing in
NFL and she's used sparingly here, but it's like Mel Brooks
uses her like she's a hand grenade.
He just lobs her intra scene and she just explores and takes
everything with it and just dominates.
I mean, this scene, Tafa de Darlene, even as a kid when I
didn't understand what Tafa was, I still found that line funny
because she makes it funny. But the dialogue between them
when they're saying goodbye, it's so deliberately like,
overwrought and saccharine. But that's because she will then
undercut it beautifully. You know, how can I say in a few
minutes what has taken me a lifetime to understand?
Won't you try? All right, you've got it, Mr.
Poorly. And that you've got it, Mr.
That's always a good thing of it's amazing after the other is.
It's like, not the lips, not the hair, not the lips.
Every time you go, don't forget all the nails just end up
rubbing elbows with each other. That's the only thing that can
touch. Yeah, a great moment at the end
of that scene as well, when she's just when all the steam
kicks off from the It's just that it's amazing that Madeline
Khan ended up playing Elizabeth, but the original plan was for
Khan to play Inga. She changed her mind during the
casting process and went for Elizabeth instead.
Yeah, she, I mean, she's used barely like you said, Matt, but
she's incredible. She's love it when the conductor
shouting all aboard and she's like, oh, there's that horrid
man again. Yeah.
Doing his job. Yeah, just doing this job.
I love that she dodges an air kiss as well.
Yeah. Really nervous.
Yeah. And when Frederick is travelling
from America to Transylvania, are you over?
He's an American couple bickering.
And then in the very next scene on the train to Europe,
Frederick, he's a couple having the exact same conversation,
word for word, but this time it's in German.
Yeah, I. Mean you wouldn't know that if
you didn't speak German, no? Definitely not.
But but America to Transylvania on train.
That is, that is always hilarious.
It's just the way they do it, though.
It's like New York. Anyone in New York, people in
New York, that's like Transylvania.
Pennsylvania next day.
Yeah, Amazing. It's just like camera doesn't
move, the frame doesn't move at all.
For the long, long train journey, Brooks used stock night
travel shot for the American exteriors.
But for the Transylvanian leg, Brooks wanted like a stark black
leafless trees and low hand and fog.
But no stock footage of that kind existed, obviously.
So the built one production designer Dale Hennessy conceived
of a forest set 40 feet deep and 100 feet long.
That's incredible he didn't scrimp on the production design.
Not at all, for what? Like, that must be about a
minute's worth of footage. Yeah, well, the layer, the Dolly
track parallel to it and under crank the camera to 8 frames per
second. The Dolly grip ran along the
track. The result, when projected at 24
frames per second, was a 30 mile an hour landscape, but the
actual footage was only 12 feet long, which gave them around 8
seconds. So to get more footage, they
placed a large tree trunk at the start and the end of the Dolly
track. Both were close to the lens, so
as the tree trunk filled the screen, that just repeated the
footage. It looks legit.
It totally does, yeah. Yeah, you don't notice any
break? Obviously it's.
Great. Now and then you get to the end
of this journey, which is the this other comic performance, I
mean, this introduction of Marty Feldman.
The great thing about it is it's perfectly set up as an absolute
moment of actual horror because you've got the billowing fog and
smoke, that sound of something like scraping towards Frederick
and that slope pushing on his face, the crash of lightning.
It's a proper like universal horror moment.
It's a brilliant introduction. But then it's he got and there's
this two moments of genius here. I mean the conversation to get
into over Frederick pronounced at Frankenstein, which he got
really takes umbrage at and you know he does.
Frederick tries to calm down. Also.
You must be eager. No, that's I go he.
Just digs his heels in. But they told me he was eager.
They were wrong then, weren't they?
I mean that line he. Tried to get that into
conversation as often as I can to say who gets it.
I just love, love that little bit.
They were wrong then, weren't they?
And like, that's it. That's the end of conversation
done. And then the second bit was when
Frederick gives him that kind of friendly clap on the back, but
he hits somebody. Just makes that, like, dull
thud. Yeah, it's really awkward.
And Frederick says I don't mean to embarrass you, but I'm a
rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I could help you with
that hump. What hump?
Right end of that conversation as well.
And is it just the straight face?
What hump? It's just when he's just been
challenging the script. Just Do you say Frederick?
No. Yeah.
Well, why did you say? Frederick, Frederick Funke.
It's great. Yeah.
And obviously the the Walk This Way gag is is a classic.
Classic. Yeah, it's an old vaudeville
joke, which Brooks thought was a bit crap in the edit, but he
kept it in after test audiences loved it.
It's great. Yeah, you need it.
So that gag also has one of the most surprising real world
legacies. In 1974, Aerosmith were
recording their album Toys in the Attic and hit the creative
form. We know where this is going.
Run DNC saw the film Aerosmith
recording Toys in the Attic creative all one night during
the sessions, most of the band minus guitarist Joe Perry,
because he probably would have talked about a bit to say, the
cinema nearby for a break. The film playing was Young
Frankenstein. Yeah, so when they got back to
the studio, Perry said the rest of the band were already thrown
lines from the film back and forth and laughing about the
moment. Marty Feldon tells Wilder to
Walk This Way, and so was their producer Jack Douglas, who said
that Walk This Way might be a great title for a song.
Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, it was a hit in two
decades, two different decades. Yeah.
It's a great time. So I'm picking up where
Frederick makes his way to the castle he's left the train
station with. I go firstly, what is Inga
doing? Just silent in the freezing
cold, not making a sound at the back of that horse and cart.
Having fun rolling NZ. Here.
Would you like a rolling here? It's fun, yeah.
And they set the benchmark for what expect between Frederick
and Inga's relationship. It's one innuendo laden remark
after another all the way through 1 overtly obvious sexual
reference after another. It's laid on immediately that
these two will be doing the bad thing later.
Yeah, and it's just great fun. Yeah, it is great fun.
She just lays it on really thick that she wants to sleep with
them. She's having a.
Great time though in this film she's having a wonderful she
just lights up the screen every time she's on it's.
Oh, she's incredible. Terry Garr.
So, so funny. So with Madeline Khan playing
Elizabeth, that opened the door for Terry Guard play Inga.
She had originally auditioned for Elizabeth.
She'd done multiple callbacks for it before being told that
Khan had decided to take it after all.
Bruce asked if she could come back and read for Inger instead.
But with one catch. Inger was German.
Could God do a German accent by tomorrow?
Well, she didn't panic because by an absolute fluke, she
happened to be part of the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour at the
time, right? The wig stylist on the show was
German, so Gar spent about an hour just chatting to her Megan
Small to soaking up the rhythms and the vowel sounds.
By the time she left the dressing room, she said she
walked outgoing. My God this weak weighs 40 lbs.
Boom. Done.
That's all you need. But she also had a slight figure
problem. As she put it, she'd realised,
reading the script that the part of anger was, in her words,
really all about boobs, and she had a slight problem in that
department, but wasn't about let her get in her way.
So when she turned up to the audition the next day, she was
wearing a fuzzy pink sweater with the bra stuffed with
several pairs of socks, and Brooks gave her the part on the
spot. So then on the way to the
castle, something that Brooks does all the way through this
film, build an atmosphere and tension with gag after gag on
top of it as well. The dry eyes creating this
unsettling classic horror movie setting.
The howl of a wolf in the distance.
Then this ludicrous werewolf, their wolf gag.
Yeah, that's great. Then castle.
Yeah. Why are you talking like that?
I thought you want me to. You know that wolf owls are Mel
Brooks. Yeah, crazy.
Couldn't keep himself. No, you couldn't.
No. Then they see the castle in the
distance and I got a point. There it is.
And then cut to this macabre looking structure and then he
goes home. That's.
Brilliant. In that one word, he's able to
convey such affection with this place.
Great delivery. Wonderful juxtaposition with the
visual of the crashing Thunder and the dramatic music queue
home. Massive influence on Robert I
guess this film. Loves it And finally, one of the
most juvenile gags in the film, in any film, and it's glorious.
It's. Wonderful.
It's amazing though, yeah. I go knocks at the door.
Frederick. What knockers?
Oh, thank you. It's his placement as well.
She's halfway carrying out of the back.
Yeah, yeah, it's just spilling out already.
Yeah, it's so. Funny, she says.
Thank you. What he says.
You're welcome. The guy wasn't scripted,
according to Wilder. Brooks just told him on the day
when you lift her out of the card, look at the knockers and
say what knockers? Yeah, yeah.
It lands. It's crazy.
Totally lands. So we're finally a Castle
Frankenstein. I wonder who will be inside the
door? Housekeeper Frau Blue her opens
the door and they keep with the setting is an unsettling sight.
We're talking about Victor's first night in the castle and
finding his grandfather's laboratory.
Nice. Firstly, another classic Brooks
gag. The reaction the horses have to
Frau Blucher's name is glorious. Yeah.
The story Brooks initially told Cloris Bleachman was that her
character's name was close to the German word for glue, right?
So getting that kind of reaction to that word from a horse is a
hilarious deep cut. Wow, that is a deep cut that.
Is good, yeah. But years later, Leachman said
she still wasn't sure whether Brooks was joking or not, or
whether he was genuinely misinformed.
Because the actual German word for clue is clever, right?
And when we go inside, the music blows up and we see this, the
majesty of this castle. An incredible set.
If you go back and watch the 1931 Frankenstein, this looks
like the same set. It does, yeah.
That's the kind of attention to detail that you'd be forgiven
for thinking that Mel Brooks wasn't really bothered about in
his work. Yeah, but this is incredible.
Oh yeah, and the production design on Young Frankenstein was
Dale Hennessy. He created the sets on Fox's
Stage 5 near Century City, LA. It was 15,000 square feet with
walls 35 foot high. The reception hall alone had 15
foot doors and a fireplace that measured 6 feet by 10, and the
total bill for the sets came to $400,000.
They didn't scrimp on it, they chose as well.
Oh, definitely, yeah. Brooks described the castle as
looking like it was made from sweat and stone, like it was in
the mountains where mist had settled on the surface, leaving
it all wet. You get that atmosphere, yeah.
And then you've got the moment where blue car is leading them
up the stairs. Brooke said it was one of the
hardest scenes to shoot, which is quite strange if you watch
it. Not technically, but because
Gene Wilder found it hilarious. When Inga says that the
staircase could be treacherous, Leachman said it should turn to
deliver. The line should see Wilders face
just split in two, laughing. That needed 15 takes to get it.
Wow. Yeah, Leachman said that
everything she did in the film just tickled Jean to bits.
Yeah, absolutely. It's when she says follow the
candles and the candles aren't. Even.
Lit follows the candles. And then we're upstairs in
Frederick's room, and it all becomes stranger still.
Cloris Leachman is incredibly measured and methodical in her
delivery, offering the good doctor a Brandy.
Some warm milk, perhaps? No, thank you very much,
Ovaltine. And while it takes that long
pause before snapping at her, nothing.
Thank you. I'm a little tired and I will
say goodnight, goodnight. Goodnight.
That vom milk dialogue was improvised by Cloris Leishman as
well. Oh nice.
No, that's great stuff. It's so, so funny.
Yeah, so after a bizarre dream, we'll hear some music.
It's behind the bookcase. So.
He gets to investigate. I mean, this moment between the
two of them, I mean, this is just some great slapstick, some
great physical comedy and just just really great use of the set
and just really great use of the detail of the set.
Oh, it's like, you know, you've got to reach for the right
device or something like that. He goes and pulls the book out
and. Nothing happens yet.
Slowly puts it back. They will try the candle and
then when that candle comes out and the whole book is spins and
he spins with it and obviously it's over ramped and it's speed
up and that just adds to it as well.
Like this whole sequence, I was watching it and I was going,
Spielberg seen this, and he's just putting all of this at
last. Week.
The rats are in there. There's all that, you know,
coming down with the candle and following.
It's just all kind of very, very just rang a little bell with me,
but it's like put the candle back.
And then when I heard that, that was a really funny line.
But then it reminds us a temple to doom when it's like we are
going to. Die.
How much of this is going to take on?
This is absolute genius. I'm just taking this and this is
where we're going to get the comedy from.
But it's absolutely fantastic. When he gets the idea, just
block the bookcase with his body.
Why do that? I thought this guy's a genius,
but it's just it's a perfect cut because you see him working
towards it, you see where it's going to hit, and then it hits.
And I almost wish this had cut a little bit later, but then it
cuts back a while and it's still really funny.
Yeah. It's just just rushing it and
put all your weight behind it. And she goes round and she
repeats the line, put the candle back.
And then that's. Great, I love her running push
on the bookcase. Yeah, that's good with all of
our weight. Then she just gets then softly,
kind of pushes it a little bit. It's just really funny.
It just spins around. It's just that use of the set as
well as grey. But then when we actually see
where they're walking down and we're like what's this set just
left from 1931 and it's just got cobwebs in it.
And now with just with I've just put a camera, they can't believe
we found this. Well, might as well make Young
Frankenstein. That's how it feels.
And it starts getting really kind of deep because you just,
you forget about that moment of slapstick and you're in this
place and you have to take it seriously because it is so
believable. And you see in like 1 year dead,
six months dead, 3 months dead, freshly dead.
And then it's I go and he says bow.
But it's just that that initial bike blast from Feldman when
he's just bang and it's just that jump scare.
You expect some music in there and it's totally flat.
They don't have any music whatsoever.
It's the same ego, he says. I go Frederick.
Back and forth. They're both getting the names
wrong because it's just that kind of a moment.
There's that bit when they are coming down the stairs and he's
trying to comfort Inga. It's just a rat.
Filthy slimy, right? That's wonderful.
I really like to say that. It is.
So the follow the music, and then this is a moment in
Wesley's kind of touching out already, but it's when he
realizes the level of detail that's gone on here, that the
amount of money they've spent on a comedy is spoof comedy as
well, and how it shot through with the love of the genre that
it's spoofing. Because the music's incredible.
It's really spindingly, but it's that slow pullback that reveals
all that cobwebbed equipment with that, you know, kind of
imaginary dialogue from Frederick's ancestors playing
off at the top. It's such an incredible shot.
I mean, not the first time I've said this all will be seen, but
it's a moment where if you didn't know this was a comedy
somehow because there's no jokes in this little bit, you'd think
this was a genuine universal horror.
Yeah. That was definitely done in the
30s because it looks like it. But then obviously you get some
wonderful dialogue he between Frederick and Igor.
What a filthy mess. I don't know.
Little paint, few flowers, couple of old pillows.
Just so funny. Yeah, Thor Pillows has read.
That just tickles me for some reason.
It's so good, Yeah. So it's so.
Specific. It's a really specific thing.
Like what? How would he know what a throw
pillow is? Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Living in that place.
And then they find the reading room and I just love how Wilder
he is, so delightfully hammy throughout this scene.
Like so dramatic when he finds something.
Look at this in the books called How I Did It by Victor, and it
just ends on that one way. So deranged.
Inga and Ego have fallen asleep because he's so enraptured in
the spoken. He's in that heavy breathing,
he's gone through it all. It could work.
Wide eyed Wilder. Hello.
Yeah. Plays out such a straight face
to balance all the comedy out, but then you just get that punch
in of the gag at the end of that picture of his grandfather
looking, like, delighted. Yeah.
Amazing. That's great.
So good. We talked about the authenticity
of it. Brooks and his team wanted the
lab to feel exactly like the 1931 original, and during pre
production they made an incredible discovery.
The man who had designed and built all of that original
equipment was still alive. His name was Kenneth Strick
Faden. He was in his 70s.
He was living in Santa Monica, basically just down the road.
Not only was he alive, he had kept the entire lot in his
garage. Incredible.
Yeah, Brooks went over to see him strickfard and showed Brooks
the gear. He flipped a switch and the
whole thing fired up exactly as it had on the Universal Sound
stages in 1931. Just kept it all turned on in
his garage. Amazing how big's his fucking
garage. After more than 4 decades
sitting in the garage, the equipment still worked.
Wonderful. Wonderful.
Incredible. And then a wonderful touch by
Brooks here, because he not only made a deal to rent the
equipment, he gave Strict Faden the screen credit he'd never
officially received on the original Frankenstein.
Wow. 4 decades just sitting in the garage.
I couldn't even find me headphones this morning.
Strict Fadden didn't just hand over the props and disappear, he
came on the set himself. He was present throughout the
laboratory chute, operating his own equipment, bringing his 43
year old creations back to life. He also designed and built brand
new pieces specifically for this film.
Wow, so good. Incredible, Brooke said.
They basically wouldn't have a film without that equipment.
Yeah. Definitely wouldn't, yeah.
It wouldn't have worked. It wouldn't have worked.
At all So dramatic wait and Hollywood history all rolled
into one hilarious first act of Young Frankenstein.
Amazing. The director.
The first outing for the legendary Mel Brooks on our
classic show Not Before Time as well.
This was the 4th film of his directorial career following The
Producers, The 12th Stairs and Blazing Saddles.
He also Co created a classic TV show Get Smart Yes, so he kept
himself busy. He Co wrote this film but first
his work as director on Young Frankenstein.
Westie. I think he does a wonderful job
as a director on this because he knows exactly what his
influences were. You can tell that these hearts
in the right place here. It's not just his brain, and I
think a lot of the brain is Wilder and a lot of the heart is
Mel Brooks. He brings a lot of like just a
real love of the genre, I think. I think he saw the 1931
Frankenstein. He's five years old and went to
theatre to watch it with his brother.
It's like something, but from when you're 5, you've got to
have a real love of it. All of the techniques that they
use, they move the camera. It's for a reason.
You move the camera. It's on a Dolly track.
They'll just go for a push and they don't just use a push and
use a zoom lens. There's some very Brooks moments
in it, but I don't know if that's down to the right now,
whether that's down to the direction.
But I think Marty Feldman takes a lot of the Brooks kind of
carrot day breaks the 4th wall. He has them little slapstick
moments, but I think he plays it better than Brooks ever could.
If I go, it wouldn't have worked out all.
It would have just been the Metal Brook show.
And I think it's really great that he's not in the film and
concentrates on the direction with the all the other actors
because he can give them his full attention.
And that's what I feel he does here.
It doesn't feel like he's distracted.
It feels like he's completely focused on the characters.
He's completely focused on what he's button on.
The screen is even completely focused on the transitions.
I mean, there's an iris in, iris out, there's wipes, there's
fades, everything that would have been used in the Universal
Era. There's even a love heart as
well, isn't there? That's a.
Little play on that iris. It's like, well, how you're
going to do an iris in, but just make it funny.
How do you make it Mel Brooks? And it just feels like he's got
a stamp on this, but it doesn't feel like it's permanent.
Mark. I scribbled all over it with Mel
Brooks initials on it. It just feels like it's part of
a collaboration, which is why I really love it.
There is some Brooks moments in there.
There's a little bit of slapstick.
There's a little bit of, you know, you can tell with bits of
his in the script that needed to be put in there.
He tries to make a little bit more clever sometimes and I
think while I pull the bang goes, no, this needs to be
stupid, but seriously stupid. And there's that moment in it.
I think he does a great job of directing it because this is his
inspiration as a director and he gets to do it for real.
Yeah, incredible stuff. You can see that he's got a lot
of real love for this. Massive love of the period,
massive love of the genre. It's just so, so good.
Yeah, very similar. I mean, I think sometimes Brooks
spoofs something because he just wants to take the piss out of
it. I don't think that's the case.
Yeah, I think not at all. As we said, if he can somehow
disregard the jokes and just look at kind of very small
snippets from a purely visual standpoint, you'd easily believe
this came back from the Universal without doubt.
Yeah, easy. Yeah, Yeah, definitely.
Like Wesley mentioned that the edits and the wipes, I mean, I
think that slight hiss they have on the audio because audio
recording back then was a lot more primitive.
That's such an intricate little detail, but he's put it in there
and you know, we've mentioned the lab equipment.
Brooks doesn't find any of that funny.
He knows what's funny and that's obviously in here, but he
doesn't find those films as a genre funny.
He completely respects the craft that went into them and he wants
to pay a tribute to it. So we know he's funny and all
that is on display here. Word play, visual Galax,
slapstick, but it's all really disciplined.
And I think, you know, not for the first time, compare this to
Blaze and Saddles, which obviously came out the same
year. So it's a very fair comparison.
Oh yeah. I don't get a sense from that
that Brooks loves Westerns that much.
No, I think he's angry with them, quite frankly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Angry just wanted to take the
piss. And you know that that is a
funny film, but it's all over the place at the same time.
This one is really tight and it's got a discipline and a
certain reference to it and that just makes it all more
effective. Yeah, I mean, I'm the same as
you guys. Unlike as usual approach to
direct, and this is really is an outlier in the Brooks Canon.
There are no wings at the camera, not really.
No outrageous cameos, not too many outrageous sight gags.
I go be in the biggest of them all, obviously.
Yeah, The reason that this hits better than anything in his
career is because he plays it straight, and that's what all
the best comedies do. If you look at the likes of
Airplane, it's a ludicrous film, but it's played straight.
Yeah, when we talked about Ghostbusters, it's an amazing
comedy, but it looks serious and you've got serious talent behind
the camera. Turn the volume down and they
look like dramatic films. Yeah, American Werewolf Another.
One American Werewolf. Absolutely.
Yeah. And comedy in these situation
plays so much differently, more impactful, just better.
Looking at those opening credits, how dramatic, how drawn
out, lofty music creating an unsettling atmosphere before
transitioning to Castle Frankenstein, which visualizes
what we've already heard. Then the jokes just sit on top
of this atmosphere and love for the genre.
Yeah, I think you can tell Brooks has taken this seriously
with the talent that he had behind the camera.
Real legends in their field lovingly restoring a bygone era.
This point will come up again and again, I'm sure, as we talk.
And we'll get into the crew as we go for costume designer
recruited Dorothy Jenkins, a legend.
Yeah, She was the first ever recipient of an Oscar for
costume design for her work on Joan of Arc in 1948.
She also worked on prestige pictures like The 10
Commandments, The Music Man, The Sound of Music and True Grit.
Incredible. Yeah.
Great stuff. Described by Brooks as one of
the best costume designers that ever worked in Hollywood, he
gave a complete freedom with two stipulations.
Firstly, the costumes had a look like they could have been pulled
out of Universal's wardrobe department in 1931.
And secondly, this is classic Brooks designed the female leads
costumes to short as much cleavage as they were allowed.
Yeah. Classic Brooks the.
Mixer wildest colour pops open at some point whenever.
That's amazing. Yeah, it's so funny.
In the cleavage thing, I mean, it wasn't just pure titillation.
It's a nod to how pre code Hollywood dressed its women.
Yeah. So even by honouring the genre
and treating it with reverence, he's still able to crowbar a few
gags in there. So behind the camera, serious
dramatic talent and in front of the camera, serious comedic
talent. A wonderful balance and act
which I think Brooks gets just right.
Yes, spot on. From a directing point of view,
I could do without those crash zooms.
And I go brick in the 4th wall. Yeah, but those are classic Mel
Brooks. So you know what you expect.
Really. Yeah.
But what he does here is bring restraint, reverence and
maturity, and in doing so creates, I think we all agree,
his best work by a distance. Definitely.
Few film makers had a better 1974 than Mel Brooks.
He kicked the year off with the release of Blazing Saddles in
February, and he closed it out with Young Frankenstein in
December. And the idea for Young
Frankenstein started on the set of Blazing Saddles.
More of that on the writing section, no.
Yes, of course. Yes, we'll get right into that.
Definitely. What's different about this film
compared to other Mel Brooks films is that the great man
doesn't appear on screen himself.
He Co wrote the film with Gene Wilder, and Wilder insisted that
Brooks not play a part in the film because he had a tendency
to break the 4th wall even when he didn't mean to, just by
virtue of being Mel Brooks. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Wilder wanted Young Frankenstein
to be played straight with no wings to the audience.
So the deal was if Brooks stayed off camera, Wilder would do it.
Brooks couldn't keep himself out entirely though.
As you mentioned earlier, he does play the werewolf,
werewolf, werewolf. He plays werewolf for the stars.
He pops up as a villager near the end and he is the voice, the
voice of the noise of the screaming cat during the dart
scene. That's.
Right. Yeah, Amazing.
Nice. I'm a little tired.
Nice grouping. And he wanted to pay homage to
the great Universal Frankenstein movies of the 30s, specifically
1931's Frankenstein and 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, both of
which were directed by James Whale.
But he also took inspiration from the sequels Son of
Frankenstein from 1939, and Ghost of Frankenstein, which was
1942. Yeah, yes.
He had so much reverence for those films that he also
provides the voice of Victor Frankenstein.
We mentioned it earlier, Mimic and the dialogue from the 1931
Frankenstein film, right? He plays that completely
straight as it. I he does, yeah.
So Brooks, history of the source material goes all the way back.
As I mentioned, he was five years old in 1931 when he first
saw Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and he was
absolutely petrified. Well, you know, five years old.
Five years old. Yeah, that's going to happen.
So much so that he asked his mother if they could shut the
window by the fire escape in their Brooklyn apartment.
He was convinced the monster was going to come through the window
and eat him. Yeah, classic.
He told this story about something that his mother said.
Incredible parent. She thought about it for a
moment and then walked him through the whole journey, step
by step. She said the monster lives in
Romania. Romania isn't near the ocean, so
he's got a long way to get to a boat.
He'll need money for passage. He might not have any on account
of being a monster, possibly not having any pockets.
Even if he managed to get on a boat and might dock in Miami,
not in New York. And even if it docked in New
York, he wouldn't know the subway system.
And if he made it to Brooklyn, he wouldn't know what street
they lived on. And even if he found the street,
the people on the 1st floor had their windows open, so if he was
hungry, he'd eat them first. Brilliant.
So you're safe I. Wonder where he's got his
storytelling the buildings from? The original plan was for Young
Frankenstein to be a Columbia picture.
Brooks had a deal in place for 1.9 million.
Contracts were signed and hands were shaken.
Done deal. The wheels came off though, as
Brooks was on his way out. He leaned back into the office
and then just casually dropped in that he was planning to film
it in black and white to honour the tradition of the Universal
movies. And according to Brooks, what
followed was a herd of Jews chasing him down the hall,
telling him that there was no way there.
Was a brief attempt at a compromise.
Columbia said they'd shoot on colour stock and screen it in
black and white important markets like New York, Chicago,
LA, then run it in colour in other places, for example, like
Peru, who had just got colour TV and movies right, Right.
Brooks's instinct was that this was a bit of a stitch of waiting
to happen. He didn't interest them not to
flip everything the colour as soon as the camera stopped
rolling, so he said no. Columbia said the deal was off
and they were left floundering. Fortunately, had a willing
partner waiting in the wings. Alan Ladd Junior had just taken
over a 20th Century Fox Brooks's producer Michael Kruskov, knew
from their days as agents together in London.
So the script went over to Fox the same night Lad rang back and
said it absolutely should be made in black and white.
Amazing. He said.
The budget should be bigger, maybe 2.2 million or 2.4
million. So they were back on track.
Incredible. Yeah.
That's the kind of turn around you want.
Exactly, just someone completely agreeing and then giving you
more money. And that decision turned out to
be the start of a very long relationship.
As part of the deal, Brooks signed A5 year contract with Fox
in the studio went on to release a string of his films.
Silent movie, High Anxiety, History for the World Part 1,
and Robin Hood, Men in Tights all came out of that
arrangement. Wow.
Wonderful. It worked out for Ladd as well.
Young Frankenstein took 86 mil at the box office and it played
a big part in him being promoted to president of Fox.
Yeah, brilliant. In 1976.
From there, lad ended up green light and over 300 films,
including Star Wars, Alien and Blade Runner.
Wow. Good business.
Incredible. And now it's time to introduce
our first question from an ATRM patron.
That's one of the benefits. If you become a patron of all
the right movies, you can ask us questions for the films we're
talking about. And the first one comes from
Isabel Shaw. Hi, Isabel.
Hello, Isabel.
Isabel, clearly a big fan of your Young Frankenstein?
She asks. Every year my husband and I sit
down to watch Life of Brian on Christmas night and Young
Frankenstein on Hogmanay. Now Hogmanay is New Year's Eve
in Scotland for people outside of the UK.
Yes, indeed. Nice.
Isabel said. Do any of you have any film
watching traditions? What films and when and why?
Thanks for all your work. If you read this out, please say
hi to my husband Andy. Well, hello, Andy.
Hello, Andy. As well.
Big shout outs thanks to the question.
Isabel as well. Westie over the youth first Sulu
in The Shining every Sunday, but on top of that.
Sunday. Fun day, man, every day.
No, I mean, Christmas is a classic, isn't it?
It's always the same. It's just a Wonderful Life and
Scrooged. And then I try to fit in Lord of
the Rings around Christmas because that's when it came out
and always seems quite Christmassy to me.
So over the Christmas period I'll put that on.
If it's snowing, I have to watch The Shining.
Right. Nice.
If it's snowing outside, it has to be done and I just put a
jumper on and stare out the fucking window shining on one
side. I'm doing that every single
time. Coming back from the pub was a
classic tradition. Doesn't happen as much now, but
when I was younger, like mid 20s, it would always be like
Predator, Highlander, Point Break Commando, Die Hard, Any of
them would just be on summer's day.
I've got this thing where if it's a really sunny day and if
I've got a couple of hours, like if I'm getting ready to go out
somewhere or whatever else. It's such a weird thing, but I
watch BMX Bandits and I don't know, it just reminds us of
being a kid and it being sunny outside and it just like I
wasn't allowed to play out at a certain time that I have to
finish your dinner or whatever else.
And I watch beam experiments now go out and play after that.
And it just really reminds us that gives us that feeling.
And then recently I've got this tradition the way if I get any
new gear. So I'm a photographer by trade.
So if I buy anything new the first time I got like me on
camera and bought it for myself. When I started my own business,
which was like 1520 years ago, I watched 7.
When I opened my first camera, 7 was on.
And I just have that in my head of like looking through all the
menus and seven was on in the background.
And then every time I get a new bit of kit, no matter what it
is, I have to put 7 on before open it.
Right. Wow.
Very. Superstition.
I think so, yeah, kind of. It's just very, very comforting
to have that on. It's normally like the library
moment when like he's going to the library.
It's a houses for culture. And then I know it's it's around
that bit. Yeah.
And then any Sunday, anything. Everything on.
The Sunday yeah, I put the D100 on the laptop and then watch
Zulu on the main telly, but turn the sound down on Zulu and then
turn the D100 black and white on the laptop and watch 2 of once.
No, you still don't believe I do that, but I definitely.
Yeah, I came round to get something from you a few months
ago and it was just casually the D under on the.
Background. That over to you.
I mean, yes, some similar again obviously Christmas is a big
one, but outside the specific Christmas films, it's Lord of
the Rings for me as well. That's definitely only really
watched in December for me, usually probably 2-3 days before
Christmas itself. I think that's when it came out
at the cinema. Source managed me that also that
period between Christmas, New Year, I have to watch where
Eagles there at some point that week off work where Eagles there
is going on at some point. Brilliant.
Then I think during the summer I've just always associated the
original indie trilogy with summer holidays, so I'll watch
those across the summer months. And I mean obviously Jaws
because of July the 4th and the other one I always watch every
summer has to be the burbs because that just reminds me of
the six week summer holiday as a kid.
Late nights. Late nights rent the burbs, late
nights the burbs was on constantly.
I put that on. I can like smell the barbecue in
the freshly cut grass. It's amazing.
Superb. And then the other one, once it
starts to go kind of dark evenings again and not Halloween
as such. Maybe morning, November.
Shutter Island has to be our time, yeah?
Yeah, I love it. Fantastic.
Yeah, Well, I think we've clearly all got these little
traditions and starting chronological order from the top
of the year onwards. Wonderful, obviously.
Yeah, yeah. Don't miss any out.
Good Friday. I'm skipping ahead a few months.
Good Friday, Good Friday morning, it's Ben Hur.
Or at least some of it. Right.
Yeah, Cherry race and that's it on the afternoon, always longer
Friday without feel, start to finish.
Always. Yeah, Easter morning is
unusually reserved for Easter Parade.
Oh, OK, right. Which is a great film.
Right, OK. And then every Friday the 13th,
obviously it's one of the Friday the 13th.
The Burbs is a summer film for me.
Matt. Halloween gets fired up on
Halloween, naturally. Christmas is where it all goes
crazy and it's really prescriptive.
Christmas vacation on Christmas Tree Day when we put the
Christmas tree up. Black Christmas on the night
time. Yeah, the snowman on Christmas
Eve. Morning, Meet me in Saint Louis.
Die Hard plays in the afternoon, then Scrooge on the night time.
It's crazy. And that's like every has to be
those, otherwise something's wrong.
And that's a great question, Isabel.
Thank you very much. That was a great.
Question. Yeah.
And that wraps us up on Mel Brooks as director on Young
Frankenstein, a film which he said is the best he's ever made,
although you also said it's only his third funniest behind Blaze
and Saddles and The Producers. Disagree.
Yeah, I disagree with the second comment, but I totally agree
with the first. Yeah, certainly his most
accomplished. Oh, A. 100%.
By far. The cast.
A who's who of 70s comedic talent In Young Frankenstein,
we're talking about the good Doctor, his trusty sidekick and
his creation, starting with an outstanding turn from Gene
Wilder, who'd established himself as a solid screen force
from the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, The producers and of
course. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory. Yes.
Yes, Matt, it's over to you. I mean, I think in general, he's
really underappreciated as an actor.
And I think it might be that curse where if he's seen
primarily as a comic actor, people don't appreciate the
range and the quality of the work you do.
But for some to go from the likes of, as you said, Willy
Wonka, which is such a definitive performance of that
character, yeah, to then the films he makes in the 80s with
Richard Pryor and then all these collaborations with Brooks, he
was incredible. Yeah.
And I think he gets talked about more with nostalgia, culture
confection, which is 100% correct.
But I think he should be talked about is a real chameleon of an
actor as well because he never did the same thing twice.
There wasn't a Gene Wilder persona that he used in this
films to come back to again and again.
It was always a complete understanding of of the
character and what it needed to be.
And that's where you get here. And it's such a clever
understanding of the type of performance this needs to be
because the mannerisms, the pomposity, the deliberately
slightly hammy approach to the dialogue, it's exactly the type
of performance you do get in the 1940s in this genre because that
was the style back then. It was very theatrical.
It wasn't very not realistic. And that's what he nails.
We know he can do comedy because that's in his blood.
But this is the level above that, like as a contemporary
actor, to adjust your performance or feels like it
really could have come straight out of the 40s.
Just saying. That's true brilliance, and
that's what Wilder is here. Yeah, I think it's nothing short
of sensational. I think really is.
I mean, I don't think this is hyperbole.
It's one of the great comic performances of the silk
radiation that ever has been. Yeah, definitely.
He has it all. Such a deft touch of delivery
and screen presents. But it's the little details that
I love. Yeah.
When Elizabeth arrives and he introduces, this is Elizabeth my
financier, my fiance. Or his reaction when he's trying
to get in the sack with Elizabeth when she shows him
when she just shows up and she just completely blocks him and
he Mumbles his way out of that room.
The big ones. Bye.
I don't think it really gets noted that near the end that
Frederick has just had sex with Inga by raising the platform and
when Elizabeth arrives 5 minutes later he's trying to get
straight in there as well. A very virile man.
Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So Brooks gave Wilder pointers
throughout the shoot because he knew Wilder eventually one of
the directors own films one day, Woman in Red, obviously classic
Brooks would do something on set, then turn Wilder and say
something like say what I have to do there because I didn't
shoot the close up earlier. Don't do that.
And while I look at him and ask who you're talking to, and
Brooks would say you. When you're directing, it sounds
like Frederick reckons. We're.
Talking, Talking to you. While the would make his
directorial debut a year later with The adventures of Sherlock
Holmes's Smarter brother. Yeah, didn't really RIP up
trees, that one. Not really, no, no.
Not so much, but he did go on to have a decent directorial
career. Yeah, he did, yeah.
And Wilder wanted to wear mustaches Frederick, but Brooks
hated the idea. So they shot the same scene two
ways, one with it, one without. Brooks watched both back and
admitted Wilder was right. The Tash stayed in and Brooks
said Gene has never looked more handsome than when he was
playing Young Doctor Frankenstein.
I agree. Yeah, great, Tash.
Yeah. By the last day of shoot, Wilder
was still pitching Brooks new scenes, whole sequences that he
wanted to add. Brooks had to sit them down and
say, Gene, it's over. It's got a beginning, the middle
and end. It's beautiful.
And Wilde buried his face in his hands and said, Mel, I don't
want to go home. I want to stay here.
This is the happiest time of my life.
Wonderful. That's.
Great. I mean, nobody said that Young
Frankenstein was the best film he'd ever made as well, even
considering Willy Wonka. Yeah, right.
Yeah, Yeah. So outstanding.
Doesn't cut it for Gene Wilder here.
And comic master class as Frederick Frankenstein,
Definitely. Next up, a British comic who
built his reputation from his own TV shows of the 60s and 70s.
An iconic turn from Marty Feldman, as I go.
And Feldman is an unusual man. It's very much so.
Very much so. And quite the conundrum, because
he hadn't been in too many more movies of Naughty after this and
he hadn't been in many. You've only been in a couple
before. Died quite young though, didn't
he? He did die quite young, you're
right, yes, But it is a shame that we didn't see more of him
because he's he's wonderfully bananas.
He very much in keeping with the surrealist comedy of of Monty
Python. I think he's from that mould.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. He's always at hand with the
skier than quip or a known wink to the audience.
Again, something I kind of could do without, but that wouldn't be
a Mel Brooksville if it didn't happen.
Well, exactly. Yeah, but what I find most
interesting about filming is is his physicality.
He looks like you could pick him up with one hand, slither around
the place. He doesn't look quite human, in
the nicest possible way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean his outfit doesn't really help you don't see.
Much of it's. Like a shadow, isn't he?
Yeah, just. A shadow like himself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that really fits the
character of Igor, fits the setting, the narrative, his
place in the world, when he sat down next to the monster, when
they're talking about the Abby normal brain.
So he doesn't have any arms. He's that thin.
Yeah, yeah. And there's an absolute Peach of
a scene when Elizabeth first arrives at the castle.
All four actors and in the scene are on top form when Frederick,
introducing Elizabeth, is his financier.
It's ludicrous. Elizabeth's absolute disgust.
And I go, darling, surprise, love me.
But it's absolutely incredible. The bit where Frederick tells I
got to get the bags. Any replies?
OK, you take the bland and I'll take the one with the toilet.
The minute Feldman delivered that line, the whole cast went
take after take. Just uproarious laughter.
Unsurprising when he's biting away at the mink around.
Hilarious when she whacks him over the head with a purse as
well. Yeah, really good.
Feldman's line of comedy might not be to everybody's tastes,
but I think he really puts his own stamp on this character.
The film would have been less of an identity without him in the
cast. Oh yeah, Like you said, if that
was Brooks playing this, it just wouldn't work.
Not at all, no. And he's got a part to play in
the majority of the funniest moments in the film.
Oh. 100%, yeah. He really, really makes a
difference here. So there was only ever one
choice for Eagle and Wild. I had written the part with
Marty Feldman in mind and as soon as Feldman was offered it,
he just took it straight away, obviously.
Of course he did. Yeah, yeah, it would have been
material he's been given. Yeah, he's.
Probably looked at it thinking I can add loads to this.
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. And he does.
And he really does. And one thing that often gets
asked about Feldman in this film is how he achieved that book.
I'd look and the truth is that as a child he had Graves'
disease, but the surgery he had to correct it went wrong and
suddenly left his eyes permanently like that.
Wow. Brooks called filming the most
delicious and the most frustrating actor that he'd ever
worked with. He said his time was completely
separate from the rhythm of everybody else on set.
So funny. Brooks's instruction to the
camera operator was very simple. When Marty's talking, don't take
it upon yourself just to cut. Keep the camera rolling.
And the scene where this paid off best is the dinner scene
where Angus is, you've hardly touched your food.
And Feldman then delivers this slide about never forgetting
what his father said when at times like this.
And then just go silent for a long time, just leaves it
hanging in the air. And Brooke said it actually felt
like an hour. Yeah, because there's a cut,
isn't there? There's a cut in the in the
edit. Yeah, yeah.
I would have loved a little bit more time on that.
Yeah, a little bit more time, a little bit.
More. It would have been great.
But then eventually Wilder cracks and asks, well, what did
he say in Feldman's supply? What the hell are you doing in
the bathroom day and night? Why don't you get out of there?
Give someone else a chance. Yeah.
Full that whole potato, yeah, that's that makes it because it
says it's funny, but it's just that.
He's thinking about what he's. Thinking about what he's.
It's got nothing to do with anything.
Yeah, it's in hearts back, like his dad telling him to finish
his dinner and just like the child that he's being, like he's
not allowed to cook his food unless his mom does it for him.
All of these things going through my head of like just the
whole potato in his mouth still. Hilarious.
That's great. Brooke said afterwards he asked
the camera operator why he hadn't cut, and the operator
said he was on the verge and he didn't want to waste under the
100 feet of film on silence. But thankfully he held on.
Brooks called the moment a diamond.
Definitely. Love that moment.
Feldman also brought one of the film's best running visual gags
to the table himself. The script with him had a hump
in it, but it was Feldman's idea that the hump would move
position from scene to scene without anybody ever
acknowledging. And he just did it without
anybody known and only realized a few days later.
And Mel Brooks said, well, that's genius.
I mean, it's just the spirit of the comedy.
That is without getting the OK from Mel Brooks.
Exactly. It's just the goal of it.
I mean, if you're on that set and they're bringing in
originals props and they're bringing in or 2.2 million
budget and you're right in the middle of it and you're fucking
around with your prop on your back just because you can.
That's that's why you're so funny.
It is, yeah. It takes a lot of balls.
The line what hump as well. That was all his, Brooke said.
It was the funniest line in the film, so bringing improv and
imperfections to the screen. Feldman as Igor is a great foil
to Wild as Frankenstein. Oh yes, he's wonderful.
Finally, the man playing the creation.
The tallest one in his class. A mute.
An incredibly big mute at this point, Boyle had been in movies
since the mid 60s, most notably Endure, The Candidates and The
Friends of Eddie Coyle, and now we have the chance to flex his
comedic muscles over the USD. He's just so good in this.
What a role to play. You know, it's exactly what the
blueprint is. He's seen these earlier films.
He knows for a fact he's going to have to work incredibly hard
to get any kind of impact on the screen, especially compared with
everyone else he's acting against, acting with, or should
I say. And you just really need
somebody who's got that great physical presence and is
prepared to play the foil, prepared to play the dumb person
in the room to make everyone else look better.
He's basically setting up gags for people to knock down.
And he does it every single scene that he's in.
He's absolutely fantastic. And he's perfect for the role
because you need someone like Peter Boyle, who has this
incredible way of just Landon dialogue where it has this depth
and it has this real meaning. The only watch of his wizard and
taxi driver. And he has when he just slaps
home, he's got these stories, but they have such this
reverence in this like depth to them.
And I really think that's why you're custom because without
that speech at the end where he has part of the brain, where he
becomes eloquent, where he convinces everybody that, you
know, this man's a genius and now I can be the man that I
needed to be in it. That's not funny.
That really lands in a warm way. It's really hard to really like
for Furman. And it's it's his performance
that does that. And it's his performance all the
way through the film that sells that last moment.
I mean the physical comedy that he brings.
With the height that he's on these platform shoes and it's
just funny again. And he's genuinely scary in some
moments because you think he's genuinely just lost it.
He's genuinely, you know, threatening, really good stature
and then delivers the eloquence at the end.
I don't think anyone else could really have replaced him, to be
honest. I think he's tragically
overlooked at how good he is in this film.
I agree. I agree, not just from a comedic
point of view either. Yeah, just just excellent.
Just his. Comedy just comes, can only come
from his physicality. Exactly.
It's incredible. Yeah.
Brooks went to Boyle after a recommendation from Wilder's
agent. But it's seen the original
Frankenstein when he was about 12 years old, and he said that
it terrified him, obviously, as everybody else, definitely.
So when it came to playing the Monster, he didn't feel the need
to go back to watch the Karloff version.
The performance was already there, lodged in his memory from
being 12. Yeah, so his approach, he played
the monster as a baby, big and ugly and scary, but freshly
born, still trying to make sense of the world given the
performance. A strange tenderness which
definitely works like an innocence to it, really works as
well. Very much.
The look of the monster came from make up mastermind William
Tuttle, who'd previously worked on The Wizard of Oz and Singing
in the Rain And then challenge. Was that the 1931 version had
bolts in the neck, but Brooks didn't want to use those because
he was where you've copyright complications with Universal.
So Total came up with what Brooks called a stroke of
genius, a zipper instead. Yeah.
You don't think that he's missing the bolts when you're
watching this? Film.
I honestly put that in my mind when I think.
The big technical decision Total made was actually to borrow from
Jack Pearce, the original 1931 Frankenstein makeup artist.
He made Peter Boyle's monster face green because in black and
white, green reads as dead on skin in the way that nothing
else really does. Right.
It's a lot flatter this. There's a lot less contrast,
which is why Dwight Kubrick made the table Green and Doris Range
love. Brilliant.
That's right. Yeah.
Boyle wore 6 inch platform boots to increase his height to 6 foot
8 inches. That's big, lad.
And underneath all of that, Boyle wore about 125 lbs of
padding, plus prosthetics, including a bulging forehead.
The next tip and hem stitching on the left temple.
This resulted in five hours in the makeup chair every morning.
And Brooks said Boyle stop complaining the moment he saw
what those will look like in the dailies.
Brilliant. Yeah, they do look great.
Yeah. I love how hollow his chest
feels when Gene Hackman is banging on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gene Wilder is doing the same.
Yeah. Yeah, the other thing that
happened to Boyle on this film changed his life.
While he was on set in full monster makeup, he was
introduced to Rolling Stone reporter called Lorraine
Alterman, who came in to interview Brooks.
Boyle asked her out then and there, monster face and all, and
she said yes. They got married in 1977 and
stayed married for the rest of his life.
The wedding had a notable best man because Lorraine was best
friends with Yoko Ono. John Lennon was being a Boyle's
best man. Wow.
Amazing. Yeah.
Boyle later said of Lennon that the two of them were both
seekers of the truth, looking for a quick way to
enlightenment. Yeah, I love that.
Aren't we all? Unbelievable.
Yeah. Brilliant.
And that's the cast. Not forgetting the incredible
talents of Terry Garr, Cloris Leachman and Madeline Khan.
And Tennis Mars. Yes, Absolutely.
Combined with Wilder, Feldman and Boyle to make one of the
greatest comedy ensembles in cinema.
Yeah. All the right movies.
We'll be right back. Thank you for supporting us by
listening to the sponsors for this episode.
Thank you for listening to our sponsors.
And now it's back to the show. The middle.
With the pull of his family business too powerful to resist.
Destiny, Destiny, Noah's Gibb. And that for me as Frederick
executes his grandfather's work. And I'm starting off here with
the exhumation of a recent criminal.
In the scene before, there's a great match cut of Igor's drawn
of the monster swinging to the swinging of the body of the
hanged Man in the same great. And it's a scene which is
remarkably similar to that which opens the 1931 Frankenstein
movie. It's basically the same thing.
Frederick and I go make a night work of digging the coffin up.
But the setting is great. It's really authentic.
None of this looks like it's a set in LA.
No. Not at all.
And Brooks had bought white handkerchiefs for the crew, and
this was something he'd started doing on his second film, The 12
Chairs, where there was so much laughter on set he couldn't get
a take. Sophie, Young Frankenstein.
He bought 200 of them and told anyone not in the scene to shove
one in their mouth the moment they felt themselves about to
crack. So he said he was shooting this
graveyard scene where Feldman delivers this line.
It could be raining, and then a load of rain immediately comes
pouring down. Great.
It could be worse. It could be raining straight
down. I absolutely love that.
Yeah. So Brooks turned around at that
moment and saw a sea of white handkerchiefs in the mouths of
the entire crew. And he said to himself, I've got
myself a hid here. Yeah, so confident.
Right after that, he rang up Alan Ladd Junior at Fox and he
said don't play it safe, spend some money on advertising and
you'll make it back. Yeah, confidence.
I love it, Love it. And following this scene,
there's such an incredibly funny moment where Agora and Frederick
drop the coffin and the body breaks loose.
Before they can get it back together, the local constable
comes sniffing around asking questions.
And this is all about Gene Wilder as a comic force of
nature, working with a dead body's arm sticking out as a
prop the police has. If he needs a hand, no thanks.
Have one, Have one. That's the least funny bit as
well. To make it all seem normal,
Frederick stretches out his left hand.
Mimic on the dead hand. Yeah.
Then he starts to casually pick up the nails on the fingers of
the dead. That's just comic timing of the
highest order. That's.
Unbelievable. Yeah.
And then when he reaches out for the handshake, Why?
You're chilled to the bone. A nice won't fire would be a
thing for you. Yes, yes, a little nip from the
old button wouldn't be too bad either.
Then he slaps both hands together.
That's the chicken. Index me that every single time.
The ticket. Yes, the ticket.
Yes, Robin. Is smashing his foot off the
ground right? Move.
Oh, wow. I mean, that is just a comic
master class. Physicality, delivery, prop
work, reactions. Yeah.
Comic genius. Yeah.
Two, like two or three shots as well in the whole scene.
Yeah, that's it. Two or three angles.
No thanks, Have one. I have one.
And then we go from this to the actual same way.
He's going to try and bring this creature to life.
And seeing all that equipment sparking and working, that's
incredible. I mean, and that short waves
winched up into the skies. That's horrible.
The electricity. It's astonishing how well our
place is like an actual horror moment from Frankenstein.
I mean, yeah, wildest speech here.
You know, we shall command the thunders and penetrate into the
very womb of impervious nature herself.
Like, genuinely, that works. Like it's a proper.
Automatic moment. You totally forget a laugh in
this whole sequence. Oh yeah, totally place.
It's so straight, it's so effective.
But then it's so effective because it can not stick to how
hilarious the other bits are. I mean, I got getting down from
the roof in the split second. I understand, I understand.
Why are you shouting and you just didn't you?
And then he just leaves it because he can't talk to that.
He can't. Make sense?
Of course I did, yeah. And then this conversation with
Ingas was saying it's all double on time.
Just elevate me. No idea.
Yes, yes, raise the platform. Aussie platform.
Oh, that. Yeah, yes, probably one-on-one,
but it's so funny. Terry goes amazing in this
scene. She's.
Incredible. And then you just get elevated
obviously. And like I say, it's amazing how
long this scene actually plays out it, you know, it probably
goes for the resurrection. I mean even the dialogue like
throw the third switch, not the third.
Switch. That's really funny, but it's
the effects, it's the music, it's the sound effects as well,
the production design. It all just comes together so
well in this scene and obviously it doesn't work.
And the come back down and Frederick saw.
We will accept this with quite dignity and grace.
It gives it 2 seconds and then starts laying into the creature
like the toddler having a tantrum.
I don't want to live, I do not want to live.
The classic books Ego break in the 4th wall quite dignity and
grace. And also during the scene,
Brooks decided to use genuine 500,000 Volt electrical
discharges, basically real lightning.
Wow, it was too dangerous for a bit about the lie still under
that. So makeup man Total made a
fiberglass cast of his face and shoulders to use as a dummy.
Inside the fiberglass, Total hid what he called secret
ingredients, things that resemble brains, skull and teeth
with self-contained lights inside them that can be pulsed
open down with the dimmer. Fantastic.
Yeah. When the special effects team
through the switches, the arc started jumping just two feet
from Wilder and grew in size and power until half a million volts
were genuinely crackling through the air around.
Him just insane. Isn't.
Wilder was safe, but only because his distance from the
electrode was always greater than that of the dummies
distance from it, meaning the electricity would automatically
jump to the closest object every time.
Wow. I mean, I wouldn't be confident
in that happening to be honest. With you Not at all.
And as this is the most dramatic sequence in the film, it feels
right to ask our second Atrm patron question.
This one is from Caleb Bailey. Hello, Caleb.
Hi, Caleb. Hi Caleb.
Caleb says hi guys. I love the show.
Thank you very much. He says We all know this is a a
farce funny on purpose. So my question is, are there any
quote UN quote serious horror movies that just make you guys
laugh every time you watch? He said.
I watched Hellraiser with my daughter when she was very
young. Best parent ever, right?
Well yes, we've all been there. And he said all she did was
laugh at the little guy with the chattering teeth.
Thanks. Keep up the good work gentlemen.
PS Any plans on doing Hellraiser?
Not right now. Not right now.
No, not on the radar. No, not really, no.
Yes, yes, dear me, Caleb. Now that is a bold parental
move. It is Hellraiser especially.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah I've re watched it in the
last year or so and it is it isn't pretty.
No, it's not. It's grim.
It's not at all, no. Please don't show her the
sequel. Some very peculiar imagery in
that. Very much so, yeah.
A great question though, and I think there are many films that
if you didn't live through them as a child they might be a bit
laughable. Yeah.
I've heard certain people say that number on Elm Street's
funny. They are obviously insane.
Yeah. The films that led to mind for
me, firstly, Fred, the 13th Part 3, the 3D one.
Yeah, it's ludicrous. Yeah.
I think it's in the run of the Worst Friday sequel, really.
Pretty much guaranteed. Yeah, right.
I don't know, I've got a different. 10 Really.
Which one? Just next.
Takes Manhattan. Oh, right, yes, of course.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
He doesn't take Manhattan, He just arrives.
In Manhattan and. Then grounds into sewer.
But for Part 3, any opportunity to lunge at the camera with any
old object is taken full advantage of for the 3D effect.
It looks horrible, but the characters are so infuriatingly
annoying. The acting is laughable and the
protagonist biker gang are insanely non threatened.
One of them ends up having a wonderful time at a rope swing
for example. Yeah.
A wonderful time. She does.
And I'm also going to say The Howling, another film that we
talked about, feature. Yeah, there are some moments of
genuine terror in that film, the Open and being one of them.
But it's the monster transformation, the big
centerpiece, which was undercut some months later when American
Werewolf came out. And now it all just looks a
little bit too silly. It's a bit the animated bit.
Yeah, Oh my God, the animated bit is horrible.
Yeah, forgot about that. I didn't.
The firing and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Oh God, yeah. And finally, John Carpenter's
Christine. Yeah, I have a lot of affection
for the film, but the central premise, the killer car, it's.
Crap. It's great on the page, but
yeah, visualizing that it doesn't really work.
Yeah. No, it's not great.
No. What about you, Matt?
Yeah, I mean, interesting you mentioned Christine, because I
think Stephen King Saul attempted being a director with
maximum OverDrive. Maximum.
OverDrive. Oh boy, that didn't age well.
Like. Cocaine.
It's. A hell of a drug.
That was definitely his period. You know, don't open the old can
of worms again. But a lot of poltergeist is
quite silly, let's face it. Yeah.
Fair enough. And then in the sense of, I
don't know if it is supposed to be funny and it's a brilliant
film and one we've covered, but I will just always think of that
moment in Texas Chainsaw when Franklin's kicking off
downstairs because they've all left him in his wheelchair.
He does that, but it's when he goes to wheel out and he's in
the mood. He jabs his hand against the
door. If you just start sobbing.
Quietly. I always laugh and I feel
horrible. That's just too funny.
That is funny. Amazing.
Yeah, that's what you've ever been A Dick made.
Oh. My God on film.
Wonderful. What about you?
Was he? I mean, yeah, there's a few
crossovers, but I do always find the end of Nightmare on Arm
Street. When you go through that window,
I kind of help but chuckle a little bit.
Yeah, I know that's. Pretty funny and it's nice
because it's been such an intense move on that.
That's just when you watch it with other people, like you said
at the top, look, if you haven't lived with these films, then you
can't be laughable. I mean, Poltergeist, I've got
Jason Takes Manhattan Friday the 13th 8, which is always going to
be funny, isn't it? But to me, I mean the one that I
think is unintentionally funny and everyone finds it funny and
I think it's more of a comedy now, is the Wicker Man remake
with Nick Cage. Right.
And he's like, not the bee. I have not seen it because it
got such bad. Reviews.
It's so unintentionally funny. I think a lot of people don't
like being scared and look for the humour which overpowers fear
and if they if they go, oh that's really funny that there
is a little bit of them that might just be a little just
trying to avoid being scared. Trying to find yeah.
Trying to find humour and it's I think there is a lot of that.
So going off that theory killer, I think your daughter might have
actually been petrified of Hellraiser and just laughing at
that guy with the charities just to try and mask some kind of
pain that was happening there. So there might be fear, you
never know. But I mean, that is fair enough.
But there is that to to take into account as well.
There is a very, very fine line between terrified and hilarious.
A great question, Caleb. Thank you very much.
Yes, thank you so much and. Now that Frederick's experiment
is over, it's over to West of you on the introduction of
another weird and wonderful character.
Another weird, wonderful, another beautiful introduction
of a character as well. I mean, this is just an absolute
master class from Kenneth Mars. New plays, Inspector Kemp,
there's only one man who can who we can count on for this moment.
And just an eye patch with a monocle over the top.
That's enough. But a?
But a hand, an arm that just is just needs punching into space
and he uses it so well. It's just that when he just
lighten that cigar just by punching his arm in a different
mood, like in a different situations, and it just moulds
it's. Such a rigmarole isn't?
It it's a rigmarole, but it's fucking unreal.
It's like that. That's worth the scene just for
that bit, but that's just. Choreography.
It's incredible. It's just so well done, just the
way he turns it round to dip his finger in the cup, fire out.
That's it's just so Doctor Strangelove.
Yes, it is. It just reminds me.
It's very sellers in that performance.
But it's just the the dialogue, the way that's played in that.
I mean, I'm watching Allo Allo and I think the French policeman
of Allo Allo takes a lot from this guy.
He's pronunciation of things and it's just I mean, you don't
still. I've seen this film about, I
don't know, over double figures. I'd say it right easily, and I
still haven't got a fucking clue.
I don't know. What he's saying?
And then the opening spiel that he's got, he says he's walking
down. And I think that's totally
intentional and that's fine. But the bits that we do pay
attention to are really, really footsteps.
Footsteps. Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps.
That's absolutely fine, you know, it's brilliant, doesn't
take you out the film, even though he's completely bizarre.
Completely. Totally, totally off the wall,
but it really, really works. For some reason.
I still haven't got a clue how to pull this off.
It's just an incredible, incredible character both of the
wall and they know exactly what they're doing and that pay off.
You know, I'll pay them a little visit, which have a nice quiet
and that iris in it's that iris in that absolutely slams it for
me because it's just perfect in right here.
We'll go. This introduction is fantastic.
It's obvious. OK, pay a visit to the good
doctor. Have a nice quiet.
You should have done this soon. Oh, that's great.
And Kenneth Mars had already worked with Brooks on The
Producers in 1968. So when Young Frankenstein came
around, Brooks offered him Inspector Camp without much of
an audition process. But there was one thing he
wanted to play with him first. Yeah, Bruce called Mars and
asked very seriously. If you earn an eye patch and
you've got a monocle on top of the eye patch, brilliant.
Is that too much? Mars said.
Of course not, Brooks said. Good.
Yeah, hired. The monocle was actually
magnetized, holding it in place over the eye patch as well.
Fantastic stuff. Yeah.
It's that too much? Of course not.
Boom.
Straight in. Can you be German tomorrow?
Yes. Initially, Brooks had Dustin
Hoffman in place to play the part of Franz in The Producers,
right? Right.
Yeah. But he dropped out to star
opposite Brooks's wife and Bancroft in The Graduate.
Made Dustin Hoffman a star, made him who he is.
Yeah. Yeah, sure.
Great choice. Kenneth Mars filled Hoffman
shoes for the part of lead kind in the Producers.
Producers. Yeah.
And Brooks later said that if he got his first choice of Hoffman
and the producers, Hoffman would almost certainly have played
Kemp in Young Frankenstein. Right.
Can you imagine? It would have.
Been good change in Hollywood history that.
Is absolutely, I could see it, but it's like I love Mars in
this. I wouldn't change it for the
world. Definitely not.
And in this scene, the five previous Universal Frankenstein
films are referenced when the elder said this Tough nightmares
from five times before. This is reference to
Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of
Frankenstein, The Ghost of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein
Meets the Wolfman. Brilliant.
It knows its history. It does.
Yeah, definitely, yeah. So Frankenstein's activities
haven't gone unnoticed on Inspector Kemp will be paying a
visit to the good doctor. Very nice.
As far as Frederick is concerned, his creation has
failed and he's pretty upset about it, but he soon finds out
that it's alive. We're talking about that moment
before a visit from Kemp, and then the monster is set free.
And I'm starting off here and, and this is, I mean, this is
Wilder on Absolute top form. Yes.
Starts off with two beautiful moments at the dinner table
where he's all forlorn about the experiment not working and his
reaction when Inca says you haven't even touched the food.
Like a petulant child, he jams his hands and food.
There, now I've touched it happy.
My God. My God, that's so funny.
And then when they're talking into dessert and Frederick
explains what the dessert is to Agor, and there's a murmur from
the monster, which Frederick mistakes, there's a sound coming
from I go, oh, do you like it? Who are you talking to?
To you. You made a yummy sound.
That delivery is irresistible, and it's uniquely Gene Wilder.
And he's another uniquely Wilder moment.
His reaction to seeing the monster, Oh, it's alive.
And then stand back and he subtly approaches the body.
Hello there, he tries to whisper through the corner of his mouth.
It's a sedative, ready, and the reaction of Peter Boyles
magnificent. Just his eyes alone darting from
one side to the other is like what the fuck?
And this is just gag after gag. All different types.
Physical performances, funny lines for comedic grades,
bouncing off each other as the monster strangles Frederick as
he does his charades act. Feldman jumping up and down when
he thinks that said a dirty word is what Frederick is trying to
act out. I mean, what the fuck?
He said a dirty word. Jumping up and down and the fall
said to give thing but before ink gets it right.
Sedative on the newsy. It's absolutely crazy.
On the noisy, yeah. Said it gave.
That's insane. And Brooke said the charades
moment was one of the hardest scenes to shoot because nobody
could keep a straight face. And he gave Boyle the
instruction. You've really got to strangle
him. But despite Brooks's insistence
for Boyle to hurt Wilder, Wilder just kept laughing.
And they kept blowing takes. Yeah, I mean, it's absolute
chaos. Yeah.
But the funniest thing about this whole sequence, God, I
can't believe it exists. This when Frederick says I go
down to have a little chat with him and he's delicate demeanor,
he totally suck as I go in. Provides a safe environment for
him to be honest with him. And then he pounces some ears
and would you sit down for a moment?
No, no up here. Thank you.
That brain you give me, was it
Hans tell Brooks no. Good, good, good.
Would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
And you won't be. I will not be angry.
It's the not. I will not.
He doesn't even allow him to finish this sentence.
Fantastic. Then the Abbey normal guy.
I'm almost certain that's what it said.
Yeah, Abbey normal. Be normal.
And then it ends with him throttling.
I go and then I go gone to the. Cherry And it reminds you of
that moment when I go drop the brakes.
He just, he was like frightened of himself in the mirror.
Yeah. The only reason he's fucked all
this? Yeah, that's great.
That's where I go. Steals the brain.
It's a lift from the 31 Frankenstein film.
If you watch that scene back in the original, it's really
difficult to take seriously now. Yeah, it is really difficult.
Yeah, so the brain, the ego steals the one in the jar
labeled Hans Dellbrook, scientist and St.
There was a real Hans Dellbrook. He was a 19th century German
military historian and a professor at the University of
Berlin. Again, just authenticity.
Scientist and St. Yeah, you put that on my phone.
Decided that. Wesley, Scientist.
Insane. Wonderful.
And just to finish off the scene, a thud at the door.
Frederick must wash up. He's got to look normal and his
collar and type in pings open. Oh yeah, that's absolutely
insane. How on earth did they get away
with that? We have to look absolutely
normal. Yeah, we've got to behave
normally. It's that cut as well, straight
from next. I'm going into when Ken visits
the castle and you've got that one words that we've got to
behave normally and then he's like monsters.
Transitions. Amazing.
It's so funny. It's straight in there.
I just love where Kemp's just using his arm to slam it against
the door. It's like constantly using it.
But I mean, this sequence is so brilliant.
The back and forth between the two of them.
I mean, how many gags can you get out of a dartboard?
And five darts, 8 darts, or however many there is.
It's absolutely unprecedented how funny this is because it's
so subtle. And, you know, he throws them
and all land where they need to land.
And then Kemp goes up, pulls them all out, jams them in his
arm to carry them back for no real reason, and then just finds
out that he's got that. You know, Frederick's got his
back turned. So then he uses it to run back,
stick them, and then goes he's. Grouping.
Nice grouping and spits his water out.
Nice group and that's absolutely brilliant.
And then he's just keeps hitting them with all of these kind of
accented ends of sentences that just is just a bit of gibberish
and it's just bang. And then he he misses.
And because you are a franker. Scene, excuse me?
And it's just straight and then he just every time he's just
Jarred and misses. And if you just watch this again
and again and again, you'll find something new every single time.
First one misses the dartboard and then you've got the second
one goes out of the window, I think.
And then the third one, he's got the dart backwards when he
throws it at the cat and so it's backwards anyway and then spins
around so it hits the cup. But you know that it's not going
to stab the cat because he's throwing it backwards.
So there's even that if they're going to say, oh, you've harmed
something and it seems. There's.
Even that playfulness to it, then they're going out the
window. Then one goes behind him and he
loses it and he goes forward. Just that last one is it goes
behind him and then goes to throw it again.
It's like, how many gags can you get out of a set of darts?
And then that grown gag works again and that strip, and we're
not tired of that yet at all. That's good.
You could put that through all day, but it's just the perfect
setup. And they're going through the
window and you forget about it. And then Kemp leaves and there's
just that close and there's just a dog.
And then it comes out and you think, oh, that's the funny bit.
It's just in his helmet. It comes out and it's like, no,
it's in the front tyre, it's in the back tyre and it's in the
fucking spare tyre. So they can't even change.
And it's if that's not enough for boots, he's like, I'm just
going to do a push in on that tire.
Yeah, as it as it leaves. He didn't.
Get it? Not leaving it to the audience
to get this whatsoever as the car drives off.
I am absolutely going to punch in on that fucking deal.
And you get the whole thing and then you get a lovely fate of
Black. Brilliant between the two of
them. And absolute comedy was the
class. I mean, the universe is smiling
on this whole production, isn't? It, it really is.
Everything's coming together. It really is.
It's a beautiful thing. We're talking about all these
brilliant actors who all get their moments to shine.
I think the next scene is all about Cloris Leachman.
She's amazing in this moment. Where they've confronted her
about setting the monster free and how dangerous it is, and she
goes, not this one. He's as gentle as a lamb got to
him, jumping off the table and lunging after everyone.
Yeah. But the wonderful thing about
the scene is how she plays that violin because it's great.
It's been established. And it makes total logical sense
that she's been playing it all along because it calms the
monster down. So you totally believe that she
would have it in her position. And you know, she does use it
here. Calm down.
But it's then how she uses it in the rest of the scene to under
score every dramatic accusation that Frederick goes to death.
And she's I mean, she's shrieking by the end.
And each stab of that violin gets more and more OTT.
It was you who played that music in the middle of the night.
Yes. That was your cigar smoldering
the ashtray. Yes.
And you would look to where? Yes.
Say it. He was my boyfriend.
Just the way she builds up to that, shrieking it by the end.
Yes, she is so wonderfully audacious scene.
Yeah, brilliant. If Victor was Frau Bluhur's
boyfriend, how fucking old does that make Frau Blue?
Doesn't matter. Floris Leachman went into this
film without any instruction. Her hair, makeup and costume
were worked out on day one. She also never done a German
accent before and nobody thought coach her through one.
But now you cannot tell like you.
Can't. No, not at all.
She basically went around the set asking anybody, excuse me,
do you know a German accent at all?
Three or four people said that they did.
But the most useful one in the end was Mel Brooks, his own
mother, who was on set at the time.
Right. She got her closest to the
accent that ended up on the film.
It's great. Yeah.
Fantastic. Yeah.
Hilarious. So the monster is set free the
first of three or four times that that happens in the film.
Yeah, absolutely. But it makes for a tense and
hilarious final act. Yes, it really does.
The crew. As mentioned, there's still a
crew on Young Frankenstein. The cinematography and music are
coming up. Firstly, it's the written word
by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder on the screenplay.
This was their third movie collaboration, but the first
time they had written together, based of course on Mary
Shelley's legendary Frankenstein novel from 1818.
My thoughts on the right now are what follows on from what I was
saying about Brooks as a director.
Really, this isn't an outlier in his body of work because it's a
lot more subtle than most films he's worked on.
Now you're thinking, how can exploding bow ties and charades
weren't being strangled by a monster?
Be subtle. But compared to the pour
everything into the mix approach that he usually takes, there's
an awful lot of restraint here, Yeah.
There is, yeah. And I think that comes from a
combination of Brooks's scattergun gag, a second style,
and wild is more measured narrative approach.
You 2 said it already. Yeah, yeah.
Wild is pulling the reins. It doesn't hurt that they've got
one of the greatest novels ever written as a backbone as well,
of course. Yeah, but unlike Blues and
saddles, which is hilarious, this has got a lot more room to
breathe and tell a story and to marvel in the production design
or linger on a music queue. Saddle throws in a gag every 5
seconds. If you didn't like that one,
there'll be 1 coming soon that you'll love, and you'll forget
about the ones that you didn't. But here there's more spaced out
and they're more methodical, meaning they have to be
memorable for the whole thing to land as a comedy.
Because there's not not as many of them, even though there is
still loads. They come thick and fast, but
the big moments live longer in the memory for me because they
are written better. Yeah, there are a few that I
could do without. By the little boy at the
Transfanian train station offering a shine that doesn't
land for me. No.
No at all. No.
Take it out. Yeah, there are others that
don't land for me as well, but on the whole, Wilder and Brooks
nail them. Really nail them.
They're putting on the Ritz moment, the blind man scene, the
monster awakens scene, the classroom scene at the start.
They're big, funny moments with loads of little comic gems
underneath. Yeah, just shimmering away.
Yeah, yeah. A case of less is more here for
me, even though it's a gag a second.
Yeah. Great comedy, great restraint in
the writing. Yes.
I think the thing for me is if you do contrast this to Blaze
and Saddles, Brooks Co wrote that with four other people and
you can tell there's five voices all competing in that film to
get their voice heard, to get their jokes and get their point
across in Brooks is shouting across all of them, but there's
only two voices here. The other voice is someone who
actually came with the idea 1st and then got Brooks involved.
So it's very harmonious in that sense, like the direction
there's a discipline and it does feel like you've exactly said
it. Wilder can rein Brooks back in a
way that no one else could on saddles or anything else.
This isn't Brooks with some other people.
This is Wilder and Brooks 5050 it.
I mean, obviously there are silly moments, but it could get
really silly. And when it does nothing, that's
Wilder's influence pulling it back.
I think there are moments where Wilder let's Brooks have a
couple of gags here and there that he's maybe not keen on.
And I think you'd honestly, you can tell those because they have
the scenes that Wilder isn't in. And that's as my take on it.
But I do think when you compare it to Blair's and Saddles, I
just feel that this is much more about these two finding a
harmonious balance between what they both want this to be.
Yeah, I totally agree. I think the the word that
springs to mind when I think about the writing on this is
respect. I think they've got a massive
amount of respect for each other and a massive amount of respect
for what they can each bring to the project.
And both of you have said really I think Wilders position can't
be understated. I think to be able to rein Mel
Brooks in at this point in 74 that is that is a big way to be
able to do that and to even convince him and not to be in
his film. It's a massive thing just to do
that. You can see the influence that
he's got and then that comes to some gags being put forward and
maybe not, but I think it's they've got a real respect.
And the I think they both totally understand what they
want from the finished film because it is a pleasure to
watch and it does flow really well.
And it does have those moments where it knows exactly what the
tone is and knows exactly when to ramp that up to comedy and
knows exactly when to ramp it up the heart and knows exactly when
to ramp it up to to fear in some places.
Because some of these moments are genuinely heartfelt and
genuinely scary if you just watch them for the two or three
minutes that the meant to be played out.
There's some really, really great beats in there.
There's some really good satire and really good nods back to
classic Hollywood, especially the university.
I mean, the train station goodbye is possibly the ultimate
parody of that period of anything.
You know the femme fatale and you've got the the hero going
off and the trade. Brief encounter that.
Kind of thing. Casablanca.
It's got all.
Of them elements in it, that tip of the cap.
But it's always like, you know what?
They're just so preoccupied with the look.
They always looked perfect, but that was never put forward from
the female characters. And it gives female characters a
real platform, especially mid 70s, because no one was going to
put female characters in there to be funny on their own accord.
They're always bouncing off somebody else.
So they're always there. It just be pretty.
I mean, they are there for that reason, but they do take the
piss out with that as well. They're just to bring that to
the forefront and go, yeah, oh, how many nails?
I mean, here you can't do, you can't do this.
You can't do just the riff on it.
And then they're dealing with it.
And this. I just think there's a respect
between these two as writers, but there's also a respect for
every single person that they've cast in this film.
It's a beautiful blueprint for them to build on and they've
built on it perfectly. It's not too high that it
topples, it's just perfect to watch.
Yeah, Lords of Positives there in the right.
Definitely. So, as mentioned before, the
idea for the film started on the set of Blazing Saddles.
Brooke said that one day during filming, he invited Gene Wilder
into his trailer for some pineapple and cottage cheese.
Unusual control? Yeah, Wilder was scribbling on a
legal pad, which piqued Brooks's interest, and Wilder told him
the concept for the film. Yeah, Brooks was reluctant
because there'd been so many Frankenstein movies.
But Wilder said that what if the grandson of Doctor Frankenstein
wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever, ashamed of
all the wackos that came before him, just trying to make it as a
serious, respected scientist in his own right.
And Brooks thought that was funny.
He said, Gene, you can't write this alone.
You need a genius like me to write it with you.
And if I like it, maybe I'll direct.
Brilliant. It's really, yeah.
He asked Wyler if he had any money on him.
Wilder said he had $57. Brooke said it's a start and
pocketed it as a down payment with the agreement that he
direct if you like. But the two of them came up with
amazing $57. So the two of them started
working on the script in the evening, said Wilder's Bungalow
at the Hotel Bel Air. After their day's work on
Blazing Saddles had wrapped, Brooke said they wrote over Earl
Grey tea and English digestive biscuits, doing rewrite after
rewrite on each scene until they were happy with it.
Brilliant. You can tell that they've
written it to within an inch of it.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Like Brooks, Wilder's connection to the material was personal.
At first, he didn't really know why he was drawn to it, but
later realized that from a young age, he'd seen the 1931 film and
was terrified of it. Of course, he saw all four of
the Universal Frankenstein movies between the ages of about
8:00 and 10:00, and they stayed with him.
So when he came to writing on Frankenstein, what he really
wanted after all these years was a happy ending.
He wanted to take the thing that scared him and rewrite.
Right. OK, yeah, and Wilder and Brooks
maintained A harmonious relationship, but they did blew
up once the two of them were working on the film that
Wilder's apartment one day got into a row and Brooks had a full
screaming fit before storming out. 10 minutes later, though,
the phone rang at Wildest Place, and it was Brooks on the event.
He asked Wilder who was that madman you had in your house and
advised him that it was dangerous to have crazy people
around. Wilder recognizes as a Mel
Brooks apology. And they were fine from then on
in. That's a great story, So the
best writing that Brooks and Wilder ever did, helped in no
small part by Shelley's classic novel and James Wales's classic
movies. Next is the dramatic music for
Young Frankenstein composed by John Morris, a frequent
collaborator with Brooks whose relationship goes all the way
back to TV and Broadway productions of the 50s and 60s
and all the way up to Brooks's Life Stinks in the early 90s.
Matt John Morris's music for the film.
What do you think? Superb stuff, very harmonious.
I mean, harmonious is the word. I would describe the film
because everything music, cinematography, production
design, no one doesn't understand what the job is here.
No one is given freeway and to do what they want and bring
something really personal to the table.
There are strict boundaries of what they can do here because of
the nature of the film. But that's a challenge in and of
itself, because there's some elements of the film that aren't
being spoofed. Like the special effects aren't
there to be laughed at, they're there to look exactly how they
were and they still work as, you know, a piece of drama.
And it's the same with the music.
There's nothing contemporary but create a score that would be fit
in actual film starring Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi and make
it fit. And that's exactly why you've
got here. It's mimicry, but it also can't
sound like mimicry, and it doesn't.
It's an original imitation and that's incredibly hard to do.
Yes, it is. Yeah.
What are your thoughts on it Westie?
Yeah, I mean, it's it's exactly the same as Matt's really.
I think it's got a really romantic feel to the whole
thing. It feels like these are just
outtakes from the older films that they didn't use.
They've. Just they've, they've taken them
and just went, oh, we've found these as well as we've found all
these and we'll just rehash these.
It's got that much of A tone, but it also has quite a quite a
modern feel for the 70s. I think it just, it feels
cleaner. It feels like it's been recorded
with better equipment. It feels like the technology was
there and it's just got this real clean feel to it.
But it does it just matches what you see on the screen so
perfectly. It's used in the film when it is
used is perfect because it just, it really accentuates and really
backs up everything that you're seeing on the screen.
There's some really beautiful bursts of music and then
nothing. The opening credits are
fantastic. Closing credits are fantastic.
I think there's just so many different ideas and different
themes running through this whole film.
It gives it that variety, same as you see in between the comedy
and the tragedy. I think you've got that in the
music as well. It really is a wonderful,
wonderful piece of work from John Morris.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, Yeah, it's a hat, Rick.
I think it's like a great one of the great quiet weapons that the
film has. Yeah, definitely.
That's that's a good way to describe it, yeah.
I think it would have been very easy to write a comedy score for
a comedy film. Wink at the audience, undercut
every gag. Certainly that's what Mel Brooks
has done in the future. Yeah, that's a safer way to do
it. It is, yeah.
But he doesn't do any of that. And I know that he would have
been given that instruction by Mel Brooks as well, of course.
But he treats Young Frankenstein exactly the way that Steiner or
Waxman would have treated a 1935 Universal horror picture, for
example. Full orchestra, lush strings,
brass when the mood calls for it.
No irony whatsoever. And that main theme, it's, it's
just a perfect example of it. The soul violin, plaintive
romantic, like you said, Westie, the kind of melody that
genuinely could have rolled out of the universe lot 40 years
earlier. Like you said, it's that's the
tone of the whole film. Before a single line of dialogue
is spoken, it's going to be a love letter played straight,
mirror and all. The crew work as well.
Yeah, and I think it's bigger than just nostalgia.
The score does the heavy lifting of the films actual themes.
It carries the loneliness of the monster, the grandeur of the
family legacy, the romance with Inga and the tenderness
underneath all of it, big and bold, quietly heartbreaking.
I think it's the secret ingredient for me.
Yeah, it's really, really great. Definitely elevates the film.
The centrepiece of Morris's score in this film is that main
theme, the Transylvania lullaby we all know the one.
Mournful, melodic, stunningly beautiful perform straight as a
die. It's the heart of the entire
film, yeah. And Brooks gave Morris a
conceptual brief, not a tune. He told him this is a horror
film. Basically, in writing, scary
music would to be totally inappropriate.
The score isn't about the horror, it's about the monster.
So write me the most beautiful Eastern European lullaby you can
that's going to become the heart of the monster that'll be his
childhood, Morris understood instantly.
Because, as he later put it, Bruce always goes for the
emotional centre of something. Nice, they've got a good working
relationship. Definitely.
I mean, you take this score and put it over it.
Make a horror film and put this score over the top of it.
It works. Totally works.
Absolutely. After Morris died in 2018,
Brooks summed it all up perfectly.
He said he was my emotional right arm.
Music tells you what to feel, and he knew what I wanted you to
feel. Oh, wonderful.
Beautiful. Yeah.
Need a hand, John? No, I've got one.
I. Have one, I have one.
So a fitness score for a movie drenched in 30s monster movie
nostalgia, matching the visuals perfectly.
Definitely. Finally, a cinematographer who'd
been in the biz since the 40s, Gerald Hirschfeld Wesley, It's
over to you, love. Hirschfeld work in this.
It's so, so good. Arthur Edison, who did
Frankenstein in 1931, who was the DP on that?
John J Mescal was the DP on Bride of Frankstein in 1935.
And those two were the main sources of inspiration.
And to get them to and say it right, well, I'm going to do
this in 1974. Most labs had stopped processing
black and white film stock at this point.
I mean, he's using diffusion on the lenses here.
This was shot on the Panavision standard prime.
So they put a lot of diffusion on it, get that soft focus look,
especially on the close-ups, which is very, very much
universal. The camera was made in 1967,
right? So it was fairly new at the
time. It was a Panda vision PSRR 200,
which was lighter, and it was easier to kind of move around to
the earlier camera. So it was quite a modern look.
I mean, to give you some idea, Star Wars was shot on that
camera, Empire Strikes Back, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Clear, close Encounters, Live and Let's Die, right?
So you've got these really punchy, really colourful, really
energetic films and they take that kind of equipment and then
bring it back down with his use of lighting, his use of
blogging, his use of framing is just so classic and so
methodical and so well thought through.
And I think it was almost too good that I think Brooks would
have just went, is this a comedy or is this just so straight?
I think it might have been too good at that point because it
really, really sells this film for me.
It really does. The word by Hirschfeld cannot be
understated by anything. The writing can be spot on.
You can get all the right props. You can have the absolute set
and spend 2.2 million. But if you are not lighting that
right, if you're not shooting that right, if you're not doing
that, like I said, you know the train goodbye.
If you're not back like that and making that smoke work and just
having them strips of light coming through on the male
character and the female character.
If you're not sitting with them in the bed at the end at the,
you know, the climax of the film, for the want of a better
phrase, but they're sat and there's just that beautiful
strip of light that's just highlighting just that moment
that you need the monster. The way that that's lit, it's
low down to make them look taller.
There's all of these different techniques and all of this is
brought. He's just having an absolute
headache. But that's what makes the film
work because it's so seriously shot.
It's so beautifully shot. It's so well lit.
It's so well thought through. That's what makes it funny
because the humour comes through that.
And if it wasn't serious and if it wasn't shot by a genius and
knew exactly what he was doing and he's not parodying anything.
He's not, he's not parody. He's shooting this as serious as
if he's going to shoot, you know, another like the third in
the Frankenstein series. You know, given this type of
assignment to have that I would on the back of my mind thinking
I'm just parodying something here.
I'm not really making anything new or anything fresh.
But he's elevated to a salute. Classic films and made a comedy
out of it. It's astonishing work it.
Really is. Yeah.
Such a class act. The depth and texture of the set
and the location are brought to life by Hirschfeld.
I think these places feel real, to feel lived in.
It really feels like this is his shot to make a universal horror
movie. Brooks and Wilder can take care
of the guys. I don't think Hirschfeld's
bothered about that at all. He wants to make this look and
feel and act like a classic gothic horror movie like.
Exactly. Yeah, he should not have gone
this hard. No, he didn't need to.
No. And he does all of that by
utilizing I think all of the frame.
There is no wasted inch. Brooks went big on the
production design like we said and Hirschfeld really basks in
it. I think particularly like I
said, neither start when Frederick enters the castle.
The scale and the authenticity is is breath taken in that wide
shot. Yeah, yeah.
And the lab scenes, everything in sharp focus.
It just feels legit, of course, because you you know, the maze
and crew work and 10 strick fins.
Electric genius, but Herschel makes it look and feel like a
real working lab. And to shoot black and white,
that's doing so much of the heavy lifting.
Every shadow, every shaft of light through a castle window,
every smoke filled forest. Herschfeld treats them with the
reverence of someone who genuinely wants to be making the
30s monster picture rich contrast.
The blacks are deep and you get those classic gothic
compositions, figures framed in doorways, light and carving of
the sky, faces half lit by candles.
I mean, it's classic stuff, but it really is.
It's classical stuff. Beautiful work.
It's classical stuff, but it's really refined.
It really is. Yeah, I mean, it's perfect.
It is absolutely deliberate. 1 needs to be the frame and the
use of slow push insurance, very deliberate camera moves.
Like I love that opening where it moves in and around the
coffin to get that force with the that's amazing.
But it's not done too fast because I would take you out of
it. And then to perfectly replicate
the light and the use of candles, use of torches, use of
shadows, that bit when Frederick and I go escaping through the
streets with a coffin. You know, I've said this one,
talk about Brooks and the film in general, but take out the
jokes. If you didn't know, you'd be
convinced you're actually watching a Frankenstein film
series intent from the 30s. That's how good this looks.
Yeah, it really does. Hirschfeld came to the project
pretty much by chance. He just turned down another
film, which remains nameless, that he had a bad feeling about,
and he was sitting at home with no follow up work lined up when
Brooks called him in for an interview the very next day.
Yeah, Hirschfeld walked into the room expecting kind of a
technical conversation, but instead Brooks immediately
started winding him up about inventing fake errors in films
Hirschfeld had shot. So he asked, for example,
whether the white tub in Diary of a Mad Housewife had been
overbright. Hirschfeld took the criticism
seriously at 1st and got more and more upset before he
realized there isn't a bathtub in Diary of a Mad Housewife.
So Hirschfeld eventually fired back with one more derogatory
remark about my work, and I'll leave.
And the two of them broke up laughing and we're on the same
wavelength immediately. Lovely.
And what's interesting is that Brooks actually studied
Hirschfeld's work very closely, closely enough to fabricate
believable sounded errors. Yeah, exactly.
That's amazing. Yeah.
By 1973, Hirschfeld had built up ACV that was an unusually strong
bridge between dramatic black and white work like Fail Safe in
64 and prestige colour naturalism like Diary of a
Madhousewife, Child's Play, The Lou Met film, not the 80s horror
film Chucky. Yeah, this was exactly the kind
of dual track technical experience a 1974 black and
white pastiche of a 1931 horror film was going to need as far as
Brooks was concerned. Yeah.
Initially, though, Hirschfeld pushed back on the black and
white photography. He suggested to open the film in
black and white for the Transylvanian sequences, then
segue into colour once the story moves to modern day.
And it was, it was, and Bruce held firm, and Hirschfeld came
around to it within a few days of seeing the dailies.
Yet the black and white wasn't just appropriate, it was
actively making the film better. Absolutely.
True, yeah. It's about texture and about
depth. Isn't over any. 100% But there
was a light problem. Mid shoot, Brooks pulled
Hirschfeld aside and said that he wasn't happy with the look of
the film. But this made Hirschfeld erupt.
You and Jean Screamie Frankenstein and Bride of
Frankenstein, before we started, you said remind me of the look
of the originals, and that's where I'm giving you.
Brooks argued that he wanted to satirize the look of the
original films. Hirschfeld swab.
This was never explained to him, but Wilder back his argument up.
Now there you go. To get over this little issue,
Hirschfeld brightened close up so the comedy would read on.
The actor's face is easy, but kept the wide shots Moody James
Wheel style. He also got the production
designer to repair the cavernous 30 foot sets in light the tones
to help bounce the light off. Yeah, right.
Yeah. He also had a supervised changes
in the fall labs black and white processing mid shoot because
they hadn't processed like you said Wesley a black and white
film in years and they didn't know how to do it.
Yeah, that's dead. Don't do that anymore.
Yeah, and Castle Frankenstein had no electricity except in the
lab, which meant Hirschfeld had to like most of the film, as if
every room was being illuminated by oversized fireplaces,
candelabras and wall torches. The wall torches and fireplaces
were piped with propane gas and then plastered over to look like
2 foot thick stonework. Real logs in the fireplaces were
a fire hazard which you couldn't control, so the production used
concrete logs. The flickering firelight effect
bouncing on walls and faces was created by silk strips of fabric
fluttering in front of out of camera lamps, with brightness
raised and lowered on the dimmer.
Chris, I mean, you just take for granted, don't you?
But it's so technically proficient.
Yeah. And intricate.
All of this work so integrate. Yeah.
Each candle in the film was a hollow aluminium pipe with a
real wax candle stuck on top and a 100 Watt projection bulb
concealed in an open slot just below the candle.
An electric wire ran up the actor's sleeves and down their
trouser leg to a hidden dimmer off stage.
Right, so when an actor passed by the camera, they had to
rotate the candle in their hand made walk so the bulbs open side
switch from facing inward lighting their face to facing
outward, lighting the wall. Herschfeld said that the trick
candle was a touchy affair that required a few extra takes.
Yeah, it would have, yeah. It looks great.
Yeah. Halfway through the picture,
Brooks ran into Hirschfeld in the lunch line and said, Jerry,
I'm glad I didn't fire you 4 weeks ago.
Hirschfeld smiled and thought to himself, Mel, you're lucky I
didn't quit 4 weeks ago. Brilliant.
And we're lucky he didn't as well, because John Morris, Ken
Strick, Fayden, Dale Hennessy, Dorothy Jenkins and William
Tuttle all deserve their place in the spotlight for bringing a
beautiful balance and weight to this film.
Oh, definitely. Outstanding crew were.
Unbelievable. The end.
With the monster on the loose, he visits a little girl and took
her away safely into bed. A lovely call back to the 1931
film, Yeah, before smashing his way into an old, lonely blind
man's house for soup, wine and cigars.
Cigars over the USD? What a moment, what a moment.
I think there's this and putting on the Ritz that people remember
the most about this film. I certainly do.
Anyway, what the fuck is Gene Hackman doing in here off the
back of the French Connection? The hardest man in Hollywood,
and he just wants to try his hand at this.
I always forget he's in this until he looks up.
Even when he's looking down, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, it's Gene
Hackman. Of course it is.
A visitor, is all I ask. It starts so, so good.
He's just excellent, isn't he? He's just excellent.
And it really sets us like this is years and years and years
before Tenenbaums. But I say so much of that
performance in very much it's so like you said, delivery just
sees delivery. It's always there.
It's just the speed that he does things.
So the monster turns up and he's like, what's your name?
I didn't get that. That's.
So good, That's so good. I didn't get that.
It's just. Hackman, isn't it?
What's your name? I didn't get that.
It's it's fucking excellent. Why?
Would he get it? He's right next to him.
I didn't know you're mute. And it's like just not really.
But he's just like trying to make everything harmonious and
just trying to make this whole scene work when it cuts that
wide shot. His performance on them wide is
just absolutely 2nd and on. And how many gags can you fit
into like 4 minutes, 3-4 minutes?
It's just relentless. And it's just his delivery.
So, I mean, spilling that soup, That's hilarious.
Just carrying. Yeah.
And it's just the next, like, some wine with your soup.
And there's pouring the wine. Yeah.
He's like, wait. And then it's like, well, a
toast. And he just smashes the cup.
And then he brings out the cigars.
And it's like, I've saving these cigars.
And it's that little delivery doesn't need to go that hard.
Like I've said, it's so, so brilliant.
I've been saving these and just these little bits of dialogue
and like I'll show you, fires our friend and lights it boils
got his thumb out, so he mistakes his thumb for the
cigar. Brilliant.
And he's just when he goes, don't inhale into the tip close.
I love that. Just giving them advice.
Don't inhale till the tip close. It's like, well, how do you know
that the tips going to glory of your blind.
Man like. All of these, the depth to this
performance is absolutely brilliant, but lightning is
still on fire. And like I've said about Boyle,
like his performance here, his time in here, that the length,
the time he waits and he does this little move that I've just
watched it again this afternoon and it's so good.
He's thumbs on fire and he's staring at it and he goes.
He just enjoys it for like a split second.
He goes and then blows it out and then just start screaming.
It's absolutely fantastic. That's him out the door and it's
like, come back, come back. That was going to make espresso.
Still got this. You got wonderful performance
from Hackman. So nuanced, so brilliant, so out
of character. For him to come in and do this,
what a scene this is. It's so, so funny.
There's a nice bit of history playing out here because Peter
Boyle was offered the role of Popeye Doyle.
Yes, that's. Right.
And he didn't take it because he faced A backlash from his
performance in Jaw and he didn't want to play like this.
Kind of like bigoted Andy. That's right, yeah.
Gene Hackman came in, so the two of them sharing this scene is
really special. Yeah, this was in Bride of
Frankenstein wasn't where he visits the blind man, that's all
that's. Right.
Who's playing the violin? Yeah, it's like it is kind
nearly shot for shot, the intro of it.
But the way that this is played up is so, so brilliant.
Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's saving Bride is
crazy because they end up being great mates and they do end up
smoking cigars together and talk and then.
Yeah. So yeah, like you're saying,
Shane Hackman, 1974 Oscar winner, three times nominated,
top of his game. Yeah, what's he doing in this?
It's crazy. So.
Pleased he's in it. Well, the reason he's in is
because of tennis, because Hackman and Wilder were
occasional tennis partners, and Hackman heard about the film
through their games together. He told Wilder he'd been wanting
to try a comedy for a while and he basically begged for a part,
and he actually said he'd play the blind hermit for free if it
bent he got to do it. Which, of course, is exactly
what he ended up doing. Yeah, allegedly he didn't get
paid for it. But he isn't like I was saying
this, the wide shot seemed to be quite well played out, but there
seems to be a little bit something wrong with the
close-ups. And I think that's due to there
was some reshoots required due to make up continuity issues.
Hackman wasn't available for those.
So for example, the hand spill in the soup is Brooks.
So I think there would have been a couple more of them close-ups
where it's it's Brooks involved. Yeah, Peter Boyle wore a
protective cup during this moment to protect his vital
areas. Yeah, just fair enough.
Just just. Make it cold, yeah.
Yeah, just make it cold. Dry, I thought as I mean.
Yeah, yeah. The the final line is just so,
so funny. I was going to make espresso.
Yeah, it is the bit that everyone remembers Hackman
screaming like, where are you going before tenderly saying I
was going to make espresso. That line was an ad Lib by
Hackman and everyone just fell about laughing with it.
Yeah. And the reason the scene fits to
blacks or abruptly straight after is because Hackman could
only deliver that line once without breaking.
Everyone felt about laughing. No choice, but he used the first
take. Oh, amazing.
Even Hackman could pull it together.
Yeah, yeah. Such a special scene, though.
Yeah, super. And after the monster smashes
down the blind man's door, he's left to roam the streets,
following the lonesome sound of the violin that he loves so
much. But it's a trap, and he's
knocked out yet again by Frederick Inger.
And I go, and there's a beautiful scene where the
monster is chained open. Frederick is doing the
honourable thing. He's going in there because love
is the only thing that can save that creature.
He gives explicit instructions not to open the door, even at
the cost of his own life. But as soon as that monster
wakes up he turns his tail and is pleading at the door
whispering like let me out, get me the hell out of here and open
the God damn door I'll kick a rotten heads in.
You don't know a joke when you hear 1 SO.
When that doesn't work, he appeals to the monsters need for
love and he starts off so beautifully there's at least 7
seconds of silence while he's thinking on his feet and then
hello handsome and the cuts to pollute is that classic thing of
looking around the room for the the handsome person that he's
speaking. About Brilliant.
Brilliant. You're a good looking fellow,
you know that. And then Wilder goes on this
outrageous speech about jealousy, The Olympian ideal and
that the monster isn't evil. Frederick cradling his face in
his hands, kissing his extraordinary big forehead.
And this is the two sides of Wilder that is evident
throughout the film. He's able to easily portray like
this tender whisper right next to absolute wide eyed mania.
Yeah. When he's talking about showing
everybody that he can walk, that they're going to make the
greatest single contribution to science since the creation of
fire. Look at Peter Boyle's face in
that moment. He's completely puzzled by
what's going on. He stopped crying, and his eyes
are just looking around, like, what the fuck?
And it finished the scene of Wilder really, really tops out
when he's screaming that his name is Frankenstein, not
Frankenstein. Yeah.
And you can see the vein in his forehead bulging.
He's shouting so hard. Absolute conviction in that
performance. Yeah.
And there's another performance with conviction coming right
after this. Isn't that right, man?
There certainly is. I mean, this scene, this musical
performance, like one of the incredible things about the
scene, maybe the most, is that this is defined that song
forever. I mean.
This song is written by Irvin Berlin, one of the greatest ever
songwriters. One of his signature songs, and
you cannot do a proper straight face rendition of that song.
Now, you can't do it because you can try, but people will just be
expecting you to go in the middle of it or they'll do it
and put you off. That's how good this scene is.
And when it comes along, it's so unexpected because it is that
cliched Frankenstein moment where Frankenstein is going to
demonstrate how this creature is intelligent and it's not a
monster. So how's he going to do that
here? Oh, right, the song and dance.
No, but is it? I mean, it just comes out of
nowhere. Everyone in that theatre is so
like enraptured and on edge as to what they're going to see in,
I mean, wild in this because Frederick is so pompous and
pretentious as ever until he says, may I now present a
cultured, sophisticated man about town and then straight
into it. Like then straight into it and
the creature, I mean, it just goes from stomping on the floor
to being surprisingly light on his feet at times and getting
in. And I love that moment when
Frederick just chucks him under the chin because he's so proud
of him, like. You.
I love him. And it's all going so well in
the audience loving until that bull breaks and the creature
starts freaking out. But like, how quickly does that
audience turn on him though? Oh, we're not having it now.
We'll love new. Like 10 seconds ago.
And where did we get the cabbages from?
Like just don't bring the cabbages.
In case of crap, yeah, just. Stage dive into the audience.
It's where Wilder just keeps going.
Yeah, yeah, with the cane. Maybe look stupid.
Maybe look like a fool. Yeah, I mean, in terms of
comedy, it's as iconic as it gets and for good.
Reason superb. Oh, it's amazing.
Yeah. But unbelievably, Brooks didn't
want to put this sequence in the film.
It's crazy. Wilder wrote it into the script
really early. Brooks read it, and he was
absolutely horrified. He thought it was just far too
silly. I mean, this is Mel Brooks
saying this is far too silly. Yeah, his pitch back to Wilder
was this, but saluting. Mary Shelley was saluting.
James Whale was saluting Universal Pictures, sweating
stones, castles, lightning laboratories.
If we have the monster sing and dance, it'll just become silly
and tear the whole tone of the pitcher in half.
I can understand where he's coming.
From on the page it would have seen that way.
Definitely. But Wilder understandably fought
him really hard on it. According to him, he argued for
about 20 minutes until he was red in the face.
And then suddenly Brooks just said, OK, it's in.
And Wilder said, why did you put me through that?
And Brooks, his reply was because I wasn't sure if he was
right or not. But I knew if you didn't fight
for it, it'd be wrong. And if you really argued, I knew
it was right. And Brooks has actually told
that story slightly differently. In his version, he made a deal
with Wilder. We'll shoot it, but when you see
it cut together with the rest of the film and the dailies, you'll
want to cut it yourself. So they shot it.
And of course, when Brooks watched the dailies, he
immediately knew it was the best scene in the entire film.
He said he later apologized profusely the Wilder on opening
night. Yeah, great.
When filming the scene, they had no idea what the monster was
going to do for the actual lyrics.
Bowl had to make a decision in the moment.
Yeah. And what came out of his mouth
was that that's so funny. It never feels to get a laugh
from me that a confident man about town.
And that's his singing voice. And knowing how funny the scene
was, Brooks reportedly warned the extras that anyone who'd
broken a laughter would be arrested.
Arrested. Not fire arrested.
So instead of presenting A cultured, sophisticated man
about town, Frederick's experiment is in tatters and the
monster is captive yet again. Yet again.
The final stretch of the film sees Frederick's financier
financier Elizabeth show up unannounced before being taken
by the monster who has escaped yet again.
And we're riding the terrain right to the end as Frankenstein
and his monster trade certain assets.
Shall we say yes? Over to you first man.
Yeah, I mean, I said in the writing, I think there's moments
in this film that are definitely more Mel Brooks than Gene
Wilder, and this is 100% one of them.
The creature's got Elizabeth. It's maintenance move on her so
I can really medicine. She's initially terrified, as
she would be, until she realizes what he's packing.
And it's like, yes, Mel, I get it, he's got an enormous French
Tucker. Yes, that's the level you're
going for. That tends to be his level a lot
of the time. And it's moment, I'll be honest,
it doesn't really land for me all that well compared to
everything else, which is really clever.
What rescues it though is again just how good Madeline Khan is.
I mean she can make any scene funny, like when that violin
strikes up in the distance and having the post coital
cigarettes and he goes off towards it like her reaction.
You men are all alike, 7 or 8 quick ones, you know, with the
boys to boss to brag. You better keep your mouth shut.
Oh, I think I love him. Just.
Tawdi rescues this scene for me. She does.
Yeah. Yeah, she was a trained singer
with a great ear for music and probably have a room to make
some of her own choices on the musical moment.
The big song, the song a character sings after an
encounter with the monster or during the Incarnate of the
Morrison, was originally going to be cheek to cheek.
It was. Khan pushed for Our Sweet
Mystery of Life instead, specifically because she wanted
a song that opened with an AH sound.
Right, which makes it funny. It does.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after this, into the
moment where the monster is lured back to the castle,
knocked out clean again, chained up again, but this time with the
plan to equalize the imbalance in his cerebral spinal fluid.
And he'll be as right as rain. Another scene which looks
incredibly authentic. Ken Strick Faden's gizmos and
gadgets doing backflips and electricity bouncing around them
with Angle furiously flicking switches and turning knobs.
It may be a little confusing what's actually happening here
on 1st Watch, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Watch, but it looks incredible.
Yeah, and it's great to see Inspector Kemp for one more
scene, bursting through the door with some angry villages using
his wooden arm as a battery around and ruining the equipment
put the monster stuffs into their tracks with.
Who are you? I am the monster.
Yes, yes, I can see you are the monster.
But he's got this really articulate speech about love and
loneliness and his creator. And with that, Kemp's former
sharpness is completely blundered.
This has been his task. This is his job.
And as soon as the monster starts talking, all of that's
forgotten. Immediately.
He offers his hand in friendship and it's an obvious gag, but
it's a really hilarious moment when the monster pulls it off
and that popping the sound effect.
Oh shit, to the lumber yard. During the transference scene,
the monster becomes an articulate thinker.
This was more in line with Mary Shelley's original novel than
the Universal films. In the book, the monster is
articulate and can read and write.
Yeah, I think he also asks Frankenstein to make him a mate
as well. Yeah, which is where the the
premise for Bride of Frankenstein comes from.
Yeah, so that's pretty much it. And we're at the end of the film
and we have, you know, the monster becomes an articulate
thinker. So what Frederick going to
become? We shall see.
What could he possibly have got from the monster?
I wonder, and I wonder if this is Mel Brooks input because what
a strange way to end the film. But it is great.
It's just very strange that the lady said, we've had all of
these really wonderful moments. And I feel like Wilde has got to
the point now where he's like, you know, what I've said, what
I've wanted to say, I've pulled this off, let Mel have the last
three minutes of the film or whatever else.
It all feels a little bit tacked on, you know, keep the hat on
type of thing. It's just we've lost all of this
intelligence that we've built up all the way through the film.
It just seems to be like, oh, we'll just tape this on the end
of it then, you know, and that push in right at the end of the
eyes just seems a little bit last minute.
That doesn't seem planned at all, it seems.
Does feel a little less. I think it's quite unsettling.
I think it's probably the most scary moment in the film.
Yeah, you're right. It feels sloppy.
It feels really sloppy considering what we've been
through and how we thought through and how precise
everything has been up until that moment.
I do love that cut. Do I go sitting on the roof
playing that massive horn thing? That's really funny.
That's brilliant. I would just like to have end on
that. Like you could imply that
without them getting into bed and then, you know, that just
goes a little bit too far for me.
But cut to the fire. Her singing, wonderful.
That's great. You know, it's, it does work on
on certain levels, but it's not the level that we've been used
to. Yeah, you know what I mean.
I'm not wild about this at all. They've left the back door open
I think a little bit and it's just the breeze has got in and
it's, it's not, it's not as comfortable as I have been
throughout the whole film. It is fine, but it feels like
something I could have written and I didn't want to feel like
that. Yeah, yeah, I know what you
mean. And Madeline Khan's Elizabeth in
the final reveal in a wedding nightgown with a vertical white
St. towering beehive wig, is a homage to Elta Lanchester's
bride Frankenstein. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And I think that her performance
goes rescuer, to be honest, because she's.
Going to slip us off yeah, it's all good.
That was really funny I would have preferred to just end on
that, to be honest. I.
Would Yeah. So Frederick and Inga are
together at last. The Monster and Elizabeth are
together, but for how long? Considering his lack of
equipment, we don't know. A satisfying, weird, rappable
classic comedy. It's a weird end of.
It's a weird. End of Yeah.
Yeah, satisfying for Inga. Yes, she's very satisfied.
Yes, clearly somebody satisfied. Yeah, reception and awards.
The first cut of Young Frankenstein was a fairly
serious problem. Brooks screened a rough cut on
the Fox lot that ran over 2 hours and 20 minutes.
The audience were restless, the laps were patchy, and Brooks
knew he had a lot of work to do. And Brooks closed that showing
by saying, ladies and gentlemen, you've just seen a two hour and
20 minute failure in less than three weeks or you're back here
to see a 95 minute smash It movie.
And then he locked himself in the cutting room with this
editor, John Howard. Wow.
What Brooks realized in there was that the film actually had
too much comedy in it, joke after joke after joke with no
breathing room. So he started cutting you,
removed the weaker jokes and spaced out the moments where he
wanted the audience to relax. He said it was about getting the
rhythm of the movie right. Absolutely.
Yeah. For the best.
Yeah, definitely. He didn't do all the editing
work in a single month of the Fox lot.
He took the rough cut to multiple cities, ran four or
five different test screenings, took notes after each one.
So the process was edit screen, edit screen, edit screen, edit
screen until he tightened the write up.
Right. Good.
Yeah. Young Frankenstein was made for
2.78 million. It opened in mid-december 1974,
in the same week as The Tower, Inferno and The Godfather Part
2, and it cleaned up. The final domestic gross was
86.2 million. Really, really good.
Massive. And this made 1974 a unique year
for Mel Brooks and for Hollywood in general.
Blazing Saddles came out in February, Young Frankenstein
came out in December. So within a single calendar
year, he had two films finished in the top five with the US box
office, Blazing Saddles at #1 with $119.6 million and Young
Frankenstein and #4 with, as we've said, $86.2 million.
Wow, hot property Brooks. Yeah.
Yeah, hot property. This is the first, and today the
last time that a director has had two films in the top five
box office hits in the same year.
Wow. Oh really?
Wow. That's impressive.
Can't see that huge done again, no.
Surely not, no. I was stunned when I read that.
I mean, that is a real record breaker.
Yeah, it really is. Yeah.
Spiegelberg doing Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the same
year. Yeah, it is.
Yeah. I mean, that is the greatest
achievement ever as far as I'm concerned in.
Yeah, Yeah. But Schindler's List, I came, I
think it got pipped by Mrs. Doubtfire, so it wasn't in the
top five. Yeah, wow.
Amazing. The film was very well received
critically and that right Matt. It was Pauline Kael, in her
review, said the movie works because it has the Mary Shelley
story to lean on. We know that the monster will be
created and will get loose, and Brooks makes a leap up as a
director because although the comedy doesn't build, he carries
the story through. Absolutely agreed, Pauline.
Yeah, definitely. And Vincent can be right in the
New York Times, said Mel Brooks. Funniest, most cohesive comedy
to date. It will be misleading to
describe Young Frankenstein is astoundingly witty, but it's a
great deal of lowbrow fun of the sort that Mister Brooks
specialises in. He certainly does that.
Yeah. And finally, our man in the
fields, Roger Ebert. What do you think he gave Young
Frankenstein out of four chaps? 4 Let's say he loved it. 3 1/2.
3 1/2 Matt out of the park. Oh, love it. 4 out of four.
Just like that, Ebert said. Mel Brooks is at home with Young
Frankenstein, his most disciplined and visually
invented film. It also happens to be very
funny. Yes, parody films and comedies
don't generally fare well at the Academy Awards, but you know
Frankenstein punched above its weight.
It received 2O nominations. Best adapted screenplay for
Brooks and Wilder and Best Sound.
Right. Great production design.
Nothing costume design, nothing cinematography.
Photography, yeah. Yeah.
And it did pick up nominations at the 1975 Golden Globes.
Clovis Leachman was nominated for Best Actress in Musical or
Comedy for Foul Blue, Her and Madeline Khan nominated for Best
Supporting Actress. Sadly, neither one.
Slightly odd thing about that is those nominations that can
actually has more screen time than Leachman.
Leachman is not lead, really, is she?
No, not at all. Not at all.
In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked Young
Frankenstein #13 on the list of 100 Funniest American Films of
All Time, and in 2003 the film was inducted at the Library of
Congress National Film Registry. Amazing.
Yeah, so all that still impressing people.
And now it has 95% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 92% from
audiences, and eight out of 10 on IMDb.
It's a high score. For big numbers.
So I don't think any of us are surprised that it didn't sweep
the Oscars. But with a decent bit of Academy
recognition, positive reviews, and being a box office
blockbuster, Young Frankenstein was a success on all fronts.
Yes, sequels and influence. No sequels to Young
Frankenstein, but following the success of his Broadway
adaptation of The Producers, Brooks adapted Young
Frankenstein for the stage in 2007.
It wasn't the cultural juggernaut that The Producers
turned out to be, but it had a respectable run and picked up 3
Tony nominations as well. Yeah, but in the years since its
release, where have you seen Young Frankenstein's influence?
What do you think its legacy is? The movie that is not the stage
show, of course. Yes.
Of course, a short conversation that wouldn't.
I don't know, I. Don't know.
Matt, your thoughts? I mean, there's just so many
iconic moments in this that have become its legacy.
The blind hermit scene, putting on the ribs, obviously.
I mean, that turned up in The Bride, the Maggie Gyllenhaal
film from earlier this year, really referencing that.
And I think it's one that really established Mel Books as the
modern day master of this. Boo for me.
Blazing Saddles is part of that as well, of course, but
everything follows on from this. You don't have this.
You don't have airplane, You don't have airplane, you don't
have the Naked Gun, you know, And I think that's probably its
biggest legacy. This is how you do a spoof.
And I think also one that really struck me just the last time I
watched it, that scene, the charade scene, like the bit
after that when he sits, I got down to talk to him.
I will not be angry. That really struck me as, like,
Basil Faulty and Manuel, really lazy man.
Well, for smacking him over the head.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a really.
Good call. That's good call, yeah.
Yeah, and there's another link from Pythons to Melrose, Mel
Brooks to Pythons. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I can see some massive influence since, and I think the
likes of The Rocky Horror Picture Show that came out 75 as
real elements of this, especially the musical numbers
put into it. Steve Martin got a hold of this.
You've got like the Man with two brains that came out in 1983.
I think it's. Very much influenced by this.
And I see lots of this in Beetlejuice.
I see right through it. It's very, very similar in that
kind of respect. And then we had science,
obviously a massively favorite. I mean, Mel Brooks made this
work. He went back in and he recutted
and he made it work. But the start of this, they
wanted to make something because they loved it.
That's the message. Yeah, really.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
I think the legacy, the film is huge and I think it works on a
few levels. I think the it's the gold
standard for genre parody. It's it's in the conversation of
one of the greatest anyone making a comedy that
affectionately sends up a specific style of film making.
They're all working from this blueprint.
Yeah. The trick of playing it
completely straight, treating the genre with reverence,
letting the comedy grow out of the seriousness rather than
fighting against it. That lesson is everybody's been
studying ever since. Yeah.
It also give us Gene Wilder, the director a year later.
Like we said, he did the adventures that Sherlock Holmes,
the Smarter brother featured Marty Feldman and Madeleine
Khan. Basically the Young Frankenstein
gang reassembled. He went on to direct The World's
Greatest Love, then Haunted Honeymoon.
Similar kind of thing in 86, again with Feldman.
Mixed results on that one. None of them really hit the
heights of Young Frankenstein, but you can absolutely trace
Wilders direct and career back to what he learned watching
Brooks on this set. Yes and also I really believe
this is not tongue in cheek. I think it's one of the great
cinematic adaptations of the Frankenstein story.
Yeah, yeah. I don't see why not.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't disagree with that
at all. Yeah.
It's in the conversation of the 19311 and Brad of Frankenstein.
They put this in there with them too.
I don't think any, but anything else since comes close.
No. Fair enough.
No. So a legacy is strong now as
it's ever been. Young Frankenstein will always
be in the conversation of best comedy ever made.
Yeah. It's up there, yeah.
All the right movies ranking. Finally, it's time to rate Young
Frankenstein and score it out of 10.
And I'm starting off here. It was my choice.
I'm going to go Here comes. I was always excited to return
back to this one, and I'm so pleased that we did.
It's a film with a great production story with such
reverence for what came before it, and it's often overlooked
for the talent working behind the camera to really make the
film what it is. It's full of some of the best
comedy that Hollywood's ever produced.
It's got one of the best comedy casts ever assembled.
I'd argue it is the greatest comedy cast ever assembled.
It's got one of the greatest comic performances ever in Gene
Wilder, and it's Mel Brooks's best film.
I mean, these things are stacking up here.
I do have a few nickels. There are a couple of gags that
don't land for me. There are a few too many nodes
to the camera. I'm also not wholly satisfied
with the notion that the monster get away with the sexual attack
because he's packing a lot of heat in the power zone.
That leaves a bad taste. Fair enough.
So it's not a perfect 10, but it's very close. 9.5 out of 10
for me. Nice.
Just for what it represents, what it is, it's legacy.
Yeah. Incredible.
Yeah. Wesley, what about you?
I mean, I'm very, very similar. There's just so much of this
film that I absolutely adore. I just think it's just a
wonderful achievement from two of the greats of of the time.
And even now I think it really is the special film it really is
want to watch and I can watch it with, you know, me kids and they
love it. I love it and at all ages can
get away with this. But like you look, I do have
some issues to, you know, the the last kind of 20 minutes of
the film does seem to tend to lose a little bit of pace and it
does kind of seem to lose its way and unravel slightly towards
that. And, you know, I kind of get
lost with that. And I get to that moment
especially like, you know, when after we get that really
eloquent speech from Peter Boyle, when to get that eloquent
sweet speech from the monster, I just feel like I want to hit
rewind and go back to the start and watch it again.
Yes, that point. And for that reason, it's not
going to be a perfect 10 for me either.
But it is also very close. It's it's up there.
It's a nine for me. It's a wonderful, wonderful
film. Yeah, absolutely is.
Yeah, great score, Max. What about you?
All singing from the same hymn sheet here.
Really. I've always had a real love for
this. It absolutely tickles my funny
bone. It takes a very specific genre
of horror that I love and it gets so much humour out of it.
But at the same time it's not taking the piss out of it
because if that's all I was doing, I just don't think I
would like this at all. But the way it looks, the
production design, they are all on point and there's real
tightness to the story and the performances.
I simply don't get in any of the Mel Brooks film.
It's definitely his best film and Gene Wilder needs so much
credit for what he does on screen and what he does on the
page as well. But it is the same issue that
you guys have. We've just talked about it.
By the end, the jokes stopped landing.
They were a bit cringy, they were a bit off.
And I think what it comes down to is I don't think Mel Brooks
really knows how to end the film.
Plays and saddles just. Certainly doesn't with saddles.
Well, no. Breaks of 4th wall collapses
into nonsense in this one, ends with a Dick joke because what he
thinks is funny and it's just a little bit of a let down
considering how good the rest of it is.
So for me it is the only issue that sticks out.
So this one brings it out just a little bit to a 9.5. 9.5 as
well. Wow, very, very close in all
three scores there. Yeah.
Our 4th and final score comes
from our trusted Patreon community.
Some mini reviews to start us off with.
First comes from Matt Walters. Matt says has to be a 10 for the
songs. The Thumb on fire.
Put the candle back and let's face it, even the role in the
hair joke works. Homage and parody its finest.
And Gene Wilder's hair is extraordinary.
Yes, it is on permanent rotation in my house when I was a kid and
I still know all the words. Yeah.
Nice grouping. Yes, very nice match.
Very nice. We have to mention Hackman as
well. It's all in the jeans, isn't?
It Next up Steve says I saw Young Frankenstein and Blazing
Saddles in the theatre on their release in 74.
Yes I'm that old. Both great films but Young
Frankenstein with Leachman Feldman and got adding the extra
touches put it in my favorite comedy of all time.
What knockers nice. Thank you Steve.
Thank you, Steve. Thanks Steve.
It's a nice piece this. Is a nice piece.
This is a nice piece and our third review comes from Shazza
and Shazza says I think this is Shazza's favorite film of all
time. She says 10 times the length of
Westies lists when answering Patreon questions.
My all time #1 fave and most watched film Blow her.
They are called the films. Great excellent great excellent
scores. Three 10s on the spin so woof. 3
full marks from the period Imperial community and overall.
80 RM Peter and Scoffy and Frankenstein was What do you
think, fellas? Could it be a 10 from there
could. Be high could be an app.
I'm going to say A9. I'll stick to 10.
I'll take a punt on it. Matt, what knockers it is 10.
Oh, wow. Yeah, 10, a perfect 10 for your
Frankenstein. Amazing, amazing.
Everybody has got so much affection for this film,
considering the comments. Yeah.
And with all scores combined, that gives Young Frankenstein.
Hey, whopping 38 out of 40. Wow.
Can you believe it? Yeah, it's a big one.
Brilliant stuff. Didn't expect that, no.
Wow. And that is US done with Young
Frankenstein. But we will be back in two
weeks. Next on the show, it's John
Westie and Matt's. They'll be talking about Alfred
Hitchcock's absolute classic Stonewall Cycle.
Yeah, lovely. There we go for that one.
Wow. Yeah, get your shower curtains
drawn in your motels booked. Yeah, that'll be brilliant.
Yeah. Before that though, our studio
head and directors chair parents can hear the three fellas next
week on Double Feature, where we're shining the light on the
brilliant work of cinematographer Greg Fraser,
specifically his work on June and The Batman, two huge modern
visual achievements. 1 episode 3.
Great guys, bound to be brilliant.
Well, we'll see. That would be fantastic if I can
shut up for 5 minutes. I don't think I'll be honest,
I'll just send a. Couple of notes you'll be there
in. Spirit.
I'll be there in spirit. Body.
Yeah, feet up. I'll be banging around about
that one for a while. That's fine.
And Speaking of which, if you want to hear that double feature
episode, head to patreon.com/all the Right Movies and join the
Patron community. You'll get the full back outlog
of this show beyond the most recent 20 episodes, plus the
watch list for new releases and double feature for the films
we're not quite ready to bring on the main show yet.
However, Just Young Frankenstein was a former winner of that
show. Indeed, the format works.
It does there are over 200 episodes across all of our
formats, 2 brand new shows every month, so well worth your time
and money. Yes, definitely.
And before we go a very exciting announcement.
We do have a book coming out in September that is all the right
movies, the stories and secrets behind the making of 25 iconic
films. It's, it's finally available for
pre-order and you can find that on Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Waterstones, Indigo, independent book shops, books-a-million,
bookshop.org and wherever you buy your books.
As I said, due at the start of September.
So get your pre-order in now and avoid any pre Christmas
disappointment I'm sure. Yeah, definitely, yeah.
Banger. Incredibly proud of that one.
Yes, wonderful, wonderful stuff. 25 absolute classic films as
well. Yeah, bangers.
Yeah. And also, if you do like the
podcast and you've heard us talking about this before, but
if you could leave us a review five stars on whatever podcast
platform that you listen to us, that would be much appreciated.
Absolutely. I mean, if you've listened this
far, it must be 5 stars it. Must be and this this episode 5
stars. Yeah, of course, of course.
Come on. You can also find us across all
the usual social media platforms.
Tell us what you made of Young Frankenstein, your favorite gag,
your favorite Brooks film, or just tell us what knockers in
the timeline and tackle us in. Why not we?
Always love that from you. Absolutely, yeah.
And as ever, we're on social media around the clock.
We're on X, Blue Sky Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Our making of
movie threads go up on X and Blue Sky researched much like
our podcasts, absolutely thoroughly deep dives with an
inch of their lives, with all the information coming from at
least three sources or from the mouths of the cast and crew.
Exactly. So don't forget to check them
and everything we do is on all the right movies.com.
Sure is. And that just about wraps us up
on Young Frankenstein. We're off to put the candle
back. We don't need a hand.
Have one. Have one already, we've had a
nice quiet. Thanks so much.
Thanks guys. We'll see you.
For Psycho in two weeks. Oh.
Yeah, we'll all go a little margin page.
To the lumby yard. To the lumby yard.
Need a hand? No thanks, Have one.