Mel Brooks’s outrageously broad and deliriously silly black-and-white comedy, co-written with its neurotically bequiffed star Gene Wilder, is re-released for its 50th anniversary. Their lovingly observed 1974 movie is closer in time to the 1931 James Whale/Boris Karloff classic – whose lab equipment props Brooks actually re-used – than we are now to this film. In some ways it can now be considered not as satire or spoof, but a continuation of the Frankenstein genre, a connoisseur development or theme-variation not so far removed from the Hammer or Warhol riffs, and a whole lot more successful and intuitive than Kenneth Branagh’s deadly serious, deadly dull treatment from 1994 with Robert De Niro as the creature. Interestingly, though Wilder said that Young Frankenstein is based on the Karloff classic and its three sequels, the opening credits resoundingly declare that it is based on the Mary Shelley novel. A tongue-in-cheek joke, of course, but true in its way.
We begin the action in the present day where Wilder plays Dr Frederick Frankenstein, a distinguished neurophysiologist, deeply embarrassed by the crazy theories of his grandfather Victor Frankenstein, so much so that he insists on pronouncing his own name “Fronk–en–steen” to distinguish himself from his evil ancestor. But then he receives a legal package containing documents conferring on him the title to Castle Frankenstein in Transylvania (evidently a German-speaking area of Hungary). After bidding farewell to his alluring yet sex-averse fiancee Elizabeth (a wonderfully wisecracking Madeline Kahn), Frederick arrives in the heart of Old Europe, via train from New York, to be greeted at the station by Igor (pronounced “Eye-gor”), the grandson of his grandfather’s old manservant, played by Marty Feldman, in colossal Groucho Marx mode. Also present is Inga (Teri Garr), who is to be his assistant.
On arriving, Frederick is disconcerted by the sinister housekeeper Frau Blücher (Cloris Leachman), but overwhelmed by his own sense of thrillingly inescapable destiny, and sets out to create the great lumbering man-monster, raised from the dead. It is played by Peter Boyle as aggressive and threatening, but possessed of a poignantly vulnerable and sensitive side. Frederick discovers that by playing a sweet tune on a violin, he can soothe the creature, who goes into a fey, wide-eyed, childlike trance, darting about as if catching imaginary fireflies; it is a very funny moment.
There is a lot of really unsubtle material (before revisiting this, I’d actually forgotten about the penis-size gags) and it comes close to Carry On mode for a line where Inga simperingly misunderstands Frederick exclaiming about the “big knockers” on the door of Castle Frankenstein. But the big setpieces are still brilliant: Frankenstein and the creature’s Puttin’ on the Ritz dance routine in white tie and tails, the “creation” scene in the thunderstorm and Gene Hackman’s amazing cameo as the blind hermit who gives refuge to the runaway creature with Hackman instinctively getting the comedy style.
But Wilder himself is always superb: his frizzy hair hinting at Frederick’s romantic longings, the pop-eyed hysteria and panic never far from the surface, and the voice which under pressure will rise to that grating, shouty screech. It’s perhaps not as great as his performance in The Producers (still Brooks’s eternally relevant masterpiece) but this is still comedy gold.
• Young Frankenstein is in UK cinemas from 4 October.
