Young Frankenstein: Movie & DVD Review by Christopher Smith

Written by Mel Brooks ("Blazing Saddles," "The Producers") and Gene Wilder, "Young Frankenstein" is an affectionate send-up of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, James Whale's 1931 movie version, and all of the dozens of horror movie spin-offs they inspired.

It stars Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein - or, more specifically and phonetically, Dr. Frahnkinshteen, as he insists to be called in an effort to put as much distance as he can between himself and his grandfather, the venerable Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

When his grandfather reaches out to him from beyond the grave by way of his will, Frederick reluctantly leaves behind his high-strung fiance, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), to travel to Transylvania. There, outside his grandfather's castle, he meets his new assistants, wall-eyed Igor (Marty Feldman) and buxomly Inga (Teri Garr), before coming in contact with Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman), a chilly reed of a woman whose pinched face suggests that somewhere in her mouth, likely beneath a forked tongue, are tucked a clutch of lemons and bitters.

But what lemons, what bitters. With her hooded eyes and impervious air of haughty detachment, Leachman thrives in her character's neuroses, embracing the camp role of the tight-bunned Blucher as if she were Nosferatu re-animated after a sex change.

Gradually, hauntingly, hilariously, Frederick is drawn into the family business of re-animating dead tissue. Circumstances lead him below castle, where he finds his grandfather's helpfully titled book, "How I Did It," and begins his own connect-the-dot path to monsterdom.

With John Morris' spooky score joining Gerald Hirschfeld's stunning black and white photography in giving the proceedings weight, a corpse is exhumed, the wrong brain is implanted and life is given to a creature played by Peter Boyle - who, it should be noted, was a Christian monk before he became an actor.

You wouldn't know it here. In "Young Frankenstein," Boyle is on a slow burn, joining Brooks, Wilder and the rest of the cast in spoofing the genre while never condescending to it. Here is a comedy that loves horror movies (just as "Blazing Saddles" loved Westerns). If it didn't, the film would have lacked the necessary substance on which to hang its laughs. But Brooks, a master of the form, knows that good satires are only good satires if they can stand up to the real thing. "Young Frankenstein" stands up to the real thing. The exception? It happens to be standing on its side.

Grade: A