For those of you who have seen Gene Wilder's manic performance as Frederick Frankenstein ("that's Fronken-steen") in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), you would think that Wilder had created his humorously crazed performance all on his own. I'm sure most of it was Wilder's creation. But if you were to watch Rowland V. Lee's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939), you would realize that it's Basil Rathbone's over the top performance as Baron Wolf Von Frankenstein that inspired Wilder. Rathbone is possibly more crazed than Wilder. Initially, I thought YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN was a spoof of James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN (1931). But YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN owes more to the plot and characters of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN with a Frankenstein returning to his ancestral home, the appearance of Igor the humpback, and the Frankenstein grandson picking up where his grandfather left off resurrecting life from the dead. Brooks does throw in several bits and spoofs of FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) but YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is a humorous homage to SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and all the FRANKENSTEIN movies.
FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (both directed by James Whale) have always garnered critical praise as two of the finest early horror films. But SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is a worthy third installment in the FRANKENSTEIN franchise. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN boasts an impressive horror cast made up of Boris Karloff reprising the role of the Frankenstein monster for the third and last time, Bela Lugosi (DRACULA) with perhaps a better performance as Ygor than his more famous Count Dracula role, Basil Rathbone (numerous SHERLOCK HOLMES films) as the handsome but increasingly frazzled Wolf von Frankenstein, and Lionel Atwill (MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM) as the suspicious one armed police inspector. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN also has some amazing production design influenced heavily by earlier German Expressionism films with enormous sets, a crooked staircase, and houses and castles at odd angles. It all makes for an enjoyable, atmospheric horror story.
Directed by Rowland V. Lee with a screenplay by Willis Cooper, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN begins with Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone) returning to the town of Frankenstein in Eastern Europe with his American wife Elsa von Frankenstein (Josephine Hutchinson) and his young son Peter von Frankenstein (Donnie Dunagan). The town locals are not thrilled to have a Frankenstein back in the fold, the memory of Wolf's father's experiments and rampaging monster still fresh in their minds. Wolf and his family move back into his ancestral castle. Wolf is presented with his father's papers. Wolf has a chip on his shoulder about his father's legacy. Inspector Krogh (Lionel Atwill), the town's one armed lawman (his other arm is wooden) warns Wolf to stay clear of his father's experiments.
Wolf takes a visit to his father's laboratory next to the castle. Wolf discovers lab equipment and a steaming sulfur pit. Skulking around the laboratory is Ygor (Bela Lugosi), a local grave robber who was hanged by the town locals for his crimes but survived (granted with a deformed neck). Ygor takes Wolf to a secret crypt where Frankenstein's monster (Boris Karloff in a cool woolly vest) sleeps. Ygor tells Wolf that the monster lives but he's sick. Ygor wants Wolf to make the monster better. Wolf battles with himself on whether to kill the monster or carry on his father's work and keep the monster alive. Despite his best intentions, Wolf decides to help Frankenstein's monster survive.
The locals begin to suspect Wolf is up to no good in the laboratory. Inspector Krogh visits Wolf and Elsa to see for himself. Young Peter meets Krogh. Peter complains he's not sleeping well and recounts a visit from a giant one night, raising more suspicion from Krogh. Wolf keeps Krogh at bay while helping to keep the monster alive. Frankenstein's monster wants a better face, to be handsome like Wolf. Wolf wants to give the monster a better, smarter brain. But Ygor still has the most control over Frankenstein's monster. Ygor sends the monster into town to dispatch the town council who condemned him to death.
With two more deaths in the village, the town folk (with their pitchforks and torches) race to the gate of Frankenstein's castle seeking justice. Krogh begs Wolf to either hand over the monster or kill it. Frankenstein's monster sneaks into Peter's bedroom and steals the young boy away to the laboratory. Wolf and Krogh race to save Peter. While Krogh tussles with the monster (leading to the monster ripping Krogh's arm off a second time), Wolf battles with Ygor, forced to shoot the hunchback. Wolf then races to save Peter, grabbing a rope and swinging into the laboratory, knocking Frankenstein's monster into the sulfur pit. Wolf and his family apologize to the town and turn over the castle to them before taking a train back to safer confines.
For a horror film, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN has plenty of subtext. We've got Wolf von Frankenstein, son of the man who created the terrible monster, trying to reclaim the good Frankenstein name and honor yet succumbing to the same ego and ambition that destroyed his father. We've got Ygor, a creepy hermit, who helped Wolf's father to create the monster and paid for it with a broken neck. Ygor appears to be friendly as he asks Wolf to make Frankenstein's monster better. But Ygor has revenge on his mind. Ygor's the master manipulator, using the monster to kill the town elders who tried to hang him. And, we have Inspector Krogh. The monster tore off his arm the first time, in essence, taking away Krogh's manhood. Wolf lies to his son Peter, telling the boy Krogh lost his arm in the war. He calls Krogh a great soldier. But Krogh's impotent, a figure head authority, powerless as the law.
Besides a stellar horror cast, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN boasts a production design that is supernaturally fairy tale like and inspired by German Expressionism. We get our first taste of it as Wolf and his family draw closer to the town of Frankenstein on the train. The landscape begins to change. Gnarled, dead trees fill the train compartment window like scarecrows warning them to turn back. Both the main hall with its twisting wooden staircase and Peter's bedroom are enormous. Art director Jack Otterson and director Lee did not have child safety in mind. The staircase barely has any railings and there's a huge fireplace with a roaring fire in Peter's bedroom with no gate to deflect burning embers. But both sets look fantastic. The exterior of Frankenstein's laboratory is slightly futuristic looking, dome shaped like a mini-Griffith Park observatory. The laboratory's interior is more open than FRANKENSTEIN'S claustrophobic lab. But the filmmakers save the best for last. The laboratory was built around a sulfur pit that bubbles and spews smoke. Somebody is going to fall into that bubbling abyss.
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi would star in eight films together. Besides Edgar G. Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT (1934), SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is probably Karloff and Lugosi's best film together and certainly one of Lugosi's finest performances as Ygor. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN would be Boris Karloff's third and last time playing the monster based on Mary Shelley's 19th Century story. Karloff previously played the monster in FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. In SON, Karloff spends the first half of the film lying on a stone slab as Wolf and Ygor try to heal him. Later, Karloff shows why he's the best Frankenstein of them all with his subtle facial expressions and hand movements. It's pantomime but nobody expresses emotion under all that monster make up better than Karloff. Karloff would appear in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) but not as the monster. He would play an evil scientist who encounters not only Frankenstein's monster but Dracula and the Wolf Man.
The real revelation is Bela Lugosi as Ygor. Lugosi's best known for his iconic portrayal of Count Dracula in Tod Browning's DRACULA. Apparently director Lee liked Lugosi's performance and kept making Lugosi's part bigger and bigger in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. Lugosi steals the picture from Karloff and Rathbone. Initially, Ygor is a sympathetic character. He's survived a hanging by the town burghers that left him with a partial broken neck. He seems like an eccentric recluse. He wants Wolf to use his skills as a doctor to heal his only friend, the monster. But slowly, we learn that Ygor is a puppet master, pulling the strings of this horror tale. He wants Frankenstein's monster healthy so he can send the creature into town and dispatch the town council, all eight of them who convicted him for body snatching. Even with a shaggy head of hair and thick beard, Lugosi's Hungarian accent is hard to miss. Lugosi would reprise the role of Ygor in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942). Ironically, Lugosi would get his chance to play Frankenstein's monster in the aptly named FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943).
Basil Rathbone is best known for playing either roguish villains in film like Michael Curtiz's CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935) and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) or heroes like the world's greatest detective Sherlock Holmes in THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLE (1939) and thirteen other Sherlock Holmes films. Rathbone's role as the prodigal son Wolf in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN is a great opportunity to play a flawed man. Wolf returns to his home town to resurrect the family name. He wants to do good for the community. But he's got that Frankenstein curse of playing God. When the opportunity arises to improve upon the monster his father created, Wolf cannot resist. Rathbone's performance begins to border on frenzied as he tries to keep Inspector Krogh and his family from the truth while resurrecting Frankenstein's monster with his experiments. It's this over the top crescendo by Rathbone that Gene Wilder would feed off for his comic performance as Frederick Frankenstein in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.
After having his fun with the western genre in BLAZING SADDLES, director and writer Mel Brooks and co-writer Gene Wilder decided to tackle classic horror movies by parodying the FRANKENSTEIN films in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. It's a loving homage to the horror genre. Old castles, cob webbed laboratories, mist shrouded forests, town squares with cobblestone streets, and graveyards are lovingly recreated. Brooks even shot the film in glorious black and white and used some of the original FRANKENSTEIN laboratory equipment. Frankenstein's monster (wonderfully played by Peter Boyle) is playfully altered with a higher receding hairline and yes, that zipper on his neck. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN uses the SON OF FRANKENSTEIN plot but poaches scenes from FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN too. But YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN becomes its own FRANKENSTEIN film, original in how it uses its source material.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN introduces us to Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder), an academic doctor teaching anatomy at a university. After a lecture, he's visited by Herr Gearhart Falkstein (Richard Haydn) who brings him his grandfather's will. Leaving his fiancée Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) behind, Frederick travels to Transylvania to visit the Frankenstein castle. He's met at the train station by Igor (Marty Feldman) with movable hump and Inga (Teri Garr), a pretty lab assistant. At the castle, Frederick meets his grandfather's housekeeper (and former girlfriend) Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). But don't say Frau Blucher's name around horses (Neigh!).
During Frederick's first night in the castle, he hears the sound of a violin playing. Frederick along with Inga investigate the origin of the strange music and discover Frederick's grandfather Victor's private library. They find his book titled "How I Did It." Further investigation leads them to Victor's laboratory. After reading the manual, Frederick begins to plot on how to create life from dead tissue. Frederick and Igor dig up a dead criminal's body and bring it back to the castle. Frederick than sends Igor to steal the brain of a scientist named Hans Delbruck. But Igor drops Delbruck's brain and grabs an abnormal brain to replace it.
Frederick with Igor and Inga attempt to bring life to the dead criminal's body during a terrifying electrical storm. At first, it appears the experiment has failed. As Frederick and his assistants lament their failure, they hear groaning from deep in the castle. They rush down to find the monster (Peter Boyle) is alive. But their joy is short lived as Inspector Kemp (Kenneth Mars) visits the castle to investigate if Frederick has picked up his grandfather's bad habits of playing God.
The monster escapes into the countryside, terrorizing a local girl and briefly sharing a cigar with Harold (Gene Hackman), a blind hermit. Frederick and Igor lure the monster back into town with violin music. Frederick is convinced his creation can be sophisticated. Frederick rents out the Bucharest Academy of Science. Besides showing the audience the monster's coordination, Frederick and the monster perform a song and dance routine to "Putting on the Ritz." But an exploding stage light scares the monster and he jumps into the audience. The monster's taken to jail and placed in chains. Elizabeth arrives in Transylvania, complicating Fredrick's relationship with Inga. Tormented by a sadistic jailor (Oscar Bereji), Frankenstein's monster breaks out of jail and heads to the castle where he kidnaps Elizabeth. Frederick and Igor lure the monster back to the castle one more time. Frederick decides to give the monster a piece of his brain to save his creation.
Brooks and Wilder borrow the blueprint of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN for their YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN but take some comedic liberties. Igor changes from Lugosi's vengeful broken necked shepherd to Marty Feldman's wisecracking humpbacked sidekick to the good doctor Frankenstein. The wooden arm of Atwill's Inspector Krogh becomes a comic prop for Kenneth Mars as Inspector Kemp. Kemp's arm, at times, has a mind of its own. The dart sequence between Wilder and Mars is lifted directly from SON OF FRANKENSTEIN's match between Rathbone and Atwill (minus Rathbone missing the dart board like Wilder). Even a giant door knocker in SON is fair game in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. As Frederick helps Inga out of the cart, Igor bangs on a giant door knocker to the castle. "What knockers," Frederick exclaims. "Oh thank you doctor," Inga replies, glancing down at her cleavage. Yes, the difference between a classic old horror film and horror spoof.
Beyond all the one liners, double entendres, and sight gags, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN offers a sweet message about compassion that the original FRANKENSTEIN movies never did. Think of the monster as someone with autism or handicapped or of a different sexual orientation or a different race or color. The monster is different. The angry villagers represent the bullies and racists who persecute those that are not like them. The monster says it the best (with the assistance of part of Frederick's brain) when he tells the angry mob toward the end, "For as long as I can remember people have hated me. They looked at my face and my body and they ran away in horror. In my loneliness, I decided that if I could not inspire love, which is my deepest hope, I would instead cause fear. I live because this poor half-crazed genius, has given me life. He alone held an image of me as something beautiful..." Beautiful words from Brooks and Wilder. Frankenstein's monster spoke briefly in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Brooks makes a wise choice to have his Frankenstein's monster speak toward the end of the film, giving us a profound message about tolerance and acceptance.
Mel Brooks often acts in his own movies (like Woody Allen), playing supporting roles in BLAZING SADDLES or the lead role in HIGH ANXIETY (1977). Brooks makes a wise choice by not appearing in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (not even a cameo). The film looks and feels so much like an old classic Universal horror film that Brooks' appearance would disrupt the illusion. The star of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is Gene Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein. Wilder had made a name for himself in WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) and stole his scenes in BLAZING SADDLES. But YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN would make Wilder a bona fide comedy star. With his Albert Einstein like hair and expressive eyes, Wilder is literally the heart, soul, and brain of the picture.
Another breakout performance comes from comic Marty Feldman as the lovable Igor ("that's Eye-Gore!"). Feldman (with those unforgettable bulging eyes) had mostly been on British television doing sketch comedy but he found his calling with both Brooks and Wilder. Brooks favorites Madeline Kahn (BLAZING SADDLES) as Frederick's touchy fiancée Elizabeth and Cloris Leachman (HIGH ANXIETY) as a horse's worst nightmare Frau Blucher turn in delightful comic performances. Teri Garr (TOOTSIE) as Frederick's assistant Inga shows she has comic chops as well.
The success of the FRANKENSTEIN films including SON OF FRANKENSTEIN was Boris Karloff's nuanced, child-like performance as the monster. If Karloff doesn't both scare the audience and make them take pity on him, the FRANKENSTEIN films don't work. Future Frankenstein's including Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr, and Glenn Strange never pulled off performances like Karloff could. Peter Boyle (TAXI DRIVER) who plays the monster in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN manages to mix fright, pathos, and comedy. Boyle takes a page out of the Karloff playbook and makes his monster both a homage to Karloff but his own invention as well. Kenneth Mars (WHAT'S UP DOC?) does the same thing with Lionel Atwill's part as the wooden armed Inspector Kemp. Atwill's Krogh is a tragic character. Mars has fun with the character, turning the wooden arm into a character of its own, sometimes with a mind of its own.
With the success of BLAZING SADDLES and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, the world (or at least I) wanted another collaboration between Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder. Sadly, the two would not work together again. The closest YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN reunion we would get would be Wilder's directorial debut (right after YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN), the clunky, disjointed comedy THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER (1975) reuniting Wilder with Marty Feldman and Madeline Kahn. Brooks would reunite with Feldman one more time on the Silent Film comedy SILENT MOVIE (1976) before spoofing Hitchcock films in HIGH ANXIETY and the STAR WARS films in SPACEBALLS (1987). Feldman would try his hand at directing and co-writing a Brooks/Wilder type comedy called THE LAST REMAKE OF BEAU GESTE (1977). But none of the YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN group including Mel Brooks would ever quite attain the popularity and critical acclaim of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. A great comedy is often lightning in a bottle, fleeting and hard to duplicate.
I guess what blows me away about YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is the attention to detail and genuine love for its source SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and the other FRANKENSTEIN films. Brooks and Wilder love the characters, the atmosphere, and the classic horror film genre. Like any spoof, they fondly take the SON OF FRANKENSTEIN characters and have fun with them, showing a more humorous side than SON OF FRANKENSTEIN could do. I would love to see a movie theater some day run a double bill of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN to watch the two films side by side and enjoy their similarities and uniqueness.
