Film Forum

U.S., 1974
Directed by Mel Brooks
Starring Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr
Approx. 106 min.

“Dr Frederick Frankenstein, a distinguished neurophysiologist... 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 fiancée 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, the grandson of his grandfather’s old manservant, played by Marty Feldman, in colossal Groucho Marx mode. 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.” – The Guardian

Reviews

“YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN is a perfect example of early Brooks firing on all comic cylinders.”
– Empire Magazine

“Wilder’s hysteria seems perfectly natural. You never question what’s driving him to it; his fits are lucid and total. They take him into a different dimension.”
– Pauline Kael