Latest / All The Right Movies / Young Frankenstein (1974) | Ep. 78 - Part 1

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Young Frankenstein (1974) | Ep. 78 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

• 0:04
  All the right movies. Now that brain that you gave me,
• 0:09
  was it Hans Dellbrooks? No good.
• 0:16
  Would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
• 0:23
  And you won't be angry. I will not be angry.
• 0:29
  Abby someone, Abby someone Abby who?
• 0:34
  Abby normal. Abby normal.
• 0:39
  I'm almost sure that was the name.
• 0:42
  Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a 7 1/2 foot
• 0:50
  long, 54 inch wide gorilla? A brilliant young surgeon
• 1:01
  inherits his famous grandfather's Transylvanian
• 1:03
  estate. Soon, Frederick Frankenstein
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  falls foul of the nonsensical Ravens of a lunatic mind and
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  brings a dead mute back to life. An incredibly big mute.
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  Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder's lovingly crafted parody of the
• 1:17
  Universal Frankenstein films became one of the funniest films
• 1:20
  ever made. An imperfect homage that taught
• 1:23
  Hollywood you can salute the genre and skewer it in the same
• 1:26
  breath. My name is Luke and joining me
• 1:28
  for a roll in the hay, Westie. I was going to make espresso.
• 1:33
  And Matt? Popped the candle back.
• 1:37
  All the right movies are in Transylvania, raising the
• 1:40
  platform and giving our creation life.
• 2:03
  Hi everyone, welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast on
• 2:06
  classic and hit films that is only interested in the
• 2:08
  preservation of life. Lovely.
• 2:11
  We're telling the story of Hollywood one film at a time,
• 2:13
  and on today's show we've got one of the greatest comedy
• 2:15
  movies ever made. It's definitely up there, yeah.
• 2:19
  A record holding comic juggernaut.
• 2:21
  So we have the set of games at the ready, just in case it gets
• 2:24
  a little too exciting. Absolutely.
• 2:26
  Yeah, I'll be normal. Stand by.
• 2:29
  Set again now before we have a nice quiet chick about even
• 2:38
  Frankenstein. Yes, here is a chance for you to
• 2:45
  throw the switch and join the secret world of all the right
• 2:47
  movies by becoming a patron of the show.
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  Lovely. Yes indeed.
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  Now, if this is your first time with us, a very warm welcome.
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  riffing on a couple of films that we love.
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• 3:41
  Yes, absolutely. Quite a tomb we have in there.
• 3:45
  All the original props are in there.
• 3:49
  OK, so back to the show. Why are we talking about Young
• 3:52
  Frankenstein now? This was my pick.
• 3:55
  So it's a film that I always like to put never loved.
• 3:59
  That is until we covered it on our double feature show when we
• 4:02
  talked about this and Blaze and saddles a few years.
• 4:04
  Back, yeah. A great show and the film just
• 4:07
  clicked with me. While it was the overwhelming
• 4:09
  winner for the show, for good reason all all three of us
• 4:12
  picked it. Yes, we did, yeah.
• 4:14
  And that's why we're talking about it now.
• 4:16
  I just loved everything about it on that rewatch.
• 4:18
  I was looking for an excuse to watch it again.
• 4:20
  And honestly, once we wrapped on that show, I was looking forward
• 4:23
  to doing a deep dive into the film immediately.
• 4:26
  Right? So this has been a quite long
• 4:27
  time coming. I think it really is one of the
• 4:30
  greatest comedy films ever made. It's gag after gag, it's
• 4:32
  incredible set design, homage to the classic Universal horror
• 4:35
  tales of the 30s, and it includes, for my money, one of
• 4:38
  the greatest comedy performances.
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  Wilder's Frederick Frankenstein is one of the best.
• 4:43
  Yeah, it's. Incredible.
• 4:44
  So incredibly excited about this one.
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  Now, Westie, you've said a dirty word in your time, haven't you?
• 4:51
  One or two, I mean, wouldn't hold that against his, let's be
• 4:54
  honest. But yeah, I mean, this, this is
• 4:57
  a this is just a great film. Again, I've become more and more
• 4:59
  fond of it as the years have gone on.
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  And just like you, I think it's just it was that double feature
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  episode that made us sit up. It existed, but I just thought
• 5:08
  another pastiche on Frankenstein.
• 5:09
  I look at the front cover of the DVD and I think, can I be
• 5:12
  bothered to sit through this one?
• 5:13
  It's about Brooks film, but it's so much more than that.
• 5:16
  It's just it's a real appreciation of the period, a
• 5:18
  real appreciation of the genre. It's a very intelligent film.
• 5:22
  I think the comedy lands exactly where it needs to.
• 5:24
  It's very considered, very carefully thought through.
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  It's definitely my favorite Mel Brooks film out of all 11 of
• 5:30
  them I think I've seen. And I think it's because it's
• 5:32
  the least Mel Brooks of all the Mel Brooks films.
• 5:34
  And I think that's probably to its benefit and to his benefit
• 5:38
  as well because he's this is a real collaboration with Gene
• 5:41
  Welder. And I think this is very much a
• 5:42
  Gene Wilder film is just as much as Mel Brooks.
• 5:45
  It's very, very funny. It's very, very well paced.
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  I don't think there's a minute where I'm not entertained and
• 5:50
  there's certainly not a minute where I have to wait for the
• 5:52
  next laugh. I think they're just the lined
• 5:54
  up beautifully, the lined up perfectly.
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  And I think if you're an appreciation of cinema,
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  especially the Universal Hollywood era, then this one's
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  definitely up there as an appreciation, definitely up
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  there as a great film. But yeah, I mean, there's so
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  many things to talk about with this I'm.
• 6:07
  I'm really looking forward. To it yeah.
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  It's going to be great. Yeah.
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  Be great, yeah. And Matt darling.
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  Yeah. Surprised Love me.
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  Love me. Why are we talking about you and
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  Frankenstein that? Well, I've been aware of this
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  one from a kid really, because there's one my parents watched a
• 6:27
  lot and watching it as a kid, it's very different watching it
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  as an adult, like as a kid, it was to say, all right, I
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  understand this character. I know what Frankenstein's
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  monster is, so that's great. And it looks like the old iconic
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  creature and that's great. Some of the jokes that they did
• 6:39
  go over me head as a kid, I was more into the kind of slapstick
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  stuff. Effing With Ego is really funny,
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  but it is one where the more you come back to it, the more of the
• 6:47
  jokes you get and the funniest gets and it's just always was
• 6:50
  being up there for me. I think it deserves its status.
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  As he said, it's a double feature winner, quite rightly.
• 6:55
  I mean, I think probably said this when we did it.
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  It's just got a level of sophistication that Blason
• 6:59
  Saddles doesn't have. And I think as Wesley says, I
• 7:02
  think a lot of that's down to Gene Wyler.
• 7:04
  So we'll get in all of that and it should just be an absolute
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  battle of us to get into. Yes, yes, it certainly will.
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  I can't wait for this one. Yeah.
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  Yeah, definitely. So Young Frankenstein was Co
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  written by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, based on Mary Shelley's
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  legendary 19th century novel and directed by Brooks himself,
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  produced by Michael Gruskov for Gruskov Fincher Films and
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  distributed by 20th Century Fox in the theaters on the 15th of
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  December 1974. Shot exclusively on sets of Fox
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  Studios in LA, it stars Gene Wilder as the good doctor, and
• 7:32
  he's supported by Madeleine Kahn, Marty Feldman, Terry Garr,
• 7:35
  Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman and Kenneth Mars.
• 7:38
  Wow, Yeah, what a what a cast. Incredible.
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  Cast. Yeah, we're headed to the
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  classroom with one doctor, Frederick Frankenstein, who is
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  teaching a master class in the central nervous system and
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  getting incredibly annoyed by one of his students.
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  The beginning We opened with a long, drawn out
• 8:03
  credit sequence slowly pushing into Castle Frankenstein, where
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  some of Baron von Frankenstein's personal effects are taken from
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  his tomb. A glorious transition.
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  And we're with the brilliant surgeon Frederick Frankenstein
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  Wester, you're starting us off. Yeah, how good are the titles
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  before I get into this? Incredible.
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  How good is that 20th Century Fox logo as well?
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  Absolutely amazing. Sets the tone lovely.
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  The music's absolutely brilliant over the opening titles.
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  But this is still, I mean, apart from Raiders, I think this is
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  probably one of my favourite introductions to character ever.
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  I just absolutely love how straight while there is playing
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  this and it's just all the information is coming out of
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  this very scientific, you know, the medulla oblongata, just the
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  way he pronounces things, it's just automatically funny.
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  And we've got this, you know, this jumped up kid who's played
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  by Danny Goldman who just stands up and he's got Frankenstein.
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  He turns around to Frankenstein that close up and he spins
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  around and it's a beautiful kind of soft focus and that classic
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  light. And he's just straight away, you
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  know exactly where you are with it.
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  But Danny Goldman's great. I mean he's such a Dick, but
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  he's so so brilliant. But he's the voice of Brainy
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  Smurf from The Smurfs. He did like really 30 odd
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  episodes of it all. I know that voice from
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  somewhere. Wow.
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  As we're going, he's asking the questions and we talked about
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  the nervous system, we're talking about the brain, we're
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  talking about really intense things, and it's still pretty
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  funny. And then the Wheeling Mr.
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  Hilltop, and you think with the the little tap, with the gong.
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  And I just love that. It's just so unnecessarily funny
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  and it just wheels him in and you just think, well, what
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  what's going to happen with this guy?
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  And he stood up and he's like, raise, raise your left knee.
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  That comes up. And then you just have this real
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  runoff from Wilder where he's just rattling off all of this
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  dialogue and it's so incredibly introgate and he's just so
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  believable. Is this really urgent?
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  Who knows what he's talking about?
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  And it's like he's almost forgetting to be funny.
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  And then all of a sudden you get you filthy rock and yellow son
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  of a bitch. Where's that come from, Mr.
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  Hilltop his face and it didn't work and you just again and then
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  he's just straight back to playing it straight and bunk the
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  reaction, the nerve impulse and then he's like your mother
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  grabbing bastard and then again comes from absolutely no way
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  just them two moments. Absolutely fantastic.
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  The wheel Hilltop out he's don't forgive him an extra dollar.
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  Love that little line. Just so so brilliant.
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  And he just and then he's answering the questions he's
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  winding up and then you just get one of the most Gene Wilder
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  moments in the film, I think for me.
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  And he's got hit it hard and know exactly what you're going
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  with this character and just this really explosive moment
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  when he's talking about his his relationship with Frankenstein
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  and he's a kook and he's just starting to scream and he picks
• 10:39
  that scalpel up and you know something's going to be going
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  wrong with it. And he's just got over the top
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  and lost his mind. And the only thing that concerns
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  me is the preservation of life. And it's great into the leg.
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  And I buckle every time that goes in there because it's that.
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  And he just looks and he's like, and he takes his hand.
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  You think that's not stuck. It takes down but it's just.
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  It's just stuck. In his thigh.
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  Hand back, right and then the leg goes back over just just
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  continues and it's like class dismissed.
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  It's just, it's great. It's hilarious.
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  I love that he really sticking to this Frankenstein bit.
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  Even when he's got a scalpel in his thigh, he's still not.
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  He's not budging. Hearts and kidneys are tinker
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  toys, are you? Talking about the worm or the
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  spaghetti? Well, actually there's a lovely
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  little reference buried in this scene, and as you've just
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  mentioned it, there was the Frederick mentions, an
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  experiment by Darwin where a worm was preserved in fluid
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  until it came to life. Yeah, it's not a fictional
• 11:47
  reference. It's actually mentioned in Mary
• 11:49
  Shelley's foreword to her novel Frankenstein, Right.
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  And the Darwin in question is Erasmus Darwin, who was the
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  grandfather of the much more ballyhooed Charles Darwin,
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  Right? OK.
• 12:00
  This is in real world which. Makes it funny though.
• 12:03
  Doesn't make it funny. The level of detail, no, it
• 12:06
  really isn't to the humor. So he's got the will, he knows
• 12:10
  he's got an inheritance to score for, so he sets off on this
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  train journey and it's he when we get, I think, 2 of the finest
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  comic support and performances I've ever seen in my life, I
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  mean one after another. I mean, first of all, Madeleine
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  Khan. When is she not the best thing
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  in the film? That answer's.
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  Never. She's always the best thing in
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  NFL and she's used sparingly here, but it's like Mel Brooks
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  uses her like she's a hand grenade.
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  He just lobs her intra scene and she just explores and takes
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  everything with it and just dominates.
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  I mean, this scene, Tafa de Darlene, even as a kid when I
• 12:44
  didn't understand what Tafa was, I still found that line funny
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  because she makes it funny. But the dialogue between them
• 12:50
  when they're saying goodbye, it's so deliberately like,
• 12:52
  overwrought and saccharine. But that's because she will then
• 12:55
  undercut it beautifully. You know, how can I say in a few
• 12:58
  minutes what has taken me a lifetime to understand?
• 13:00
  Won't you try? All right, you've got it, Mr.
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  Poorly. And that you've got it, Mr.
• 13:12
  That's always a good thing of it's amazing after the other is.
• 13:15
  It's like, not the lips, not the hair, not the lips.
• 13:17
  Every time you go, don't forget all the nails just end up
• 13:21
  rubbing elbows with each other. That's the only thing that can
• 13:24
  touch. Yeah, a great moment at the end
• 13:26
  of that scene as well, when she's just when all the steam
• 13:28
  kicks off from the It's just that it's amazing that Madeline
• 13:33
  Khan ended up playing Elizabeth, but the original plan was for
• 13:35
  Khan to play Inga. She changed her mind during the
• 13:38
  casting process and went for Elizabeth instead.
• 13:40
  Yeah, she, I mean, she's used barely like you said, Matt, but
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  she's incredible. She's love it when the conductor
• 13:45
  shouting all aboard and she's like, oh, there's that horrid
• 13:47
  man again. Yeah.
• 13:50
  Doing his job. Yeah, just doing this job.
• 13:54
  I love that she dodges an air kiss as well.
• 13:57
  Yeah. Really nervous.
• 13:59
  Yeah. And when Frederick is travelling
• 14:04
  from America to Transylvania, are you over?
• 14:06
  He's an American couple bickering.
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  And then in the very next scene on the train to Europe,
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  Frederick, he's a couple having the exact same conversation,
• 14:13
  word for word, but this time it's in German.
• 14:15
  Yeah, I. Mean you wouldn't know that if
• 14:18
  you didn't speak German, no? Definitely not.
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  But but America to Transylvania on train.
• 14:24
  That is, that is always hilarious.
• 14:25
  It's just the way they do it, though.
• 14:26
  It's like New York. Anyone in New York, people in
• 14:28
  New York, that's like Transylvania.
• 14:31
  Transylvania. Pennsylvania next day.
• 14:35
  Yeah, Amazing. It's just like camera doesn't
• 14:38
  move, the frame doesn't move at all.
• 14:40
  For the long, long train journey, Brooks used stock night
• 14:44
  travel shot for the American exteriors.
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  But for the Transylvanian leg, Brooks wanted like a stark black
• 14:50
  leafless trees and low hand and fog.
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  But no stock footage of that kind existed, obviously.
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  So the built one production designer Dale Hennessy conceived
• 14:59
  of a forest set 40 feet deep and 100 feet long.
• 15:02
  That's incredible he didn't scrimp on the production design.
• 15:06
  Not at all, for what? Like, that must be about a
• 15:08
  minute's worth of footage. Yeah, well, the layer, the Dolly
• 15:11
  track parallel to it and under crank the camera to 8 frames per
• 15:14
  second. The Dolly grip ran along the
• 15:16
  track. The result, when projected at 24
• 15:18
  frames per second, was a 30 mile an hour landscape, but the
• 15:21
  actual footage was only 12 feet long, which gave them around 8
• 15:24
  seconds. So to get more footage, they
• 15:28
  placed a large tree trunk at the start and the end of the Dolly
• 15:30
  track. Both were close to the lens, so
• 15:33
  as the tree trunk filled the screen, that just repeated the
• 15:35
  footage. It looks legit.
• 15:37
  It totally does, yeah. Yeah, you don't notice any
• 15:39
  break? Obviously it's.
• 15:40
  Great. Now and then you get to the end
• 15:42
  of this journey, which is the this other comic performance, I
• 15:45
  mean, this introduction of Marty Feldman.
• 15:47
  The great thing about it is it's perfectly set up as an absolute
• 15:50
  moment of actual horror because you've got the billowing fog and
• 15:53
  smoke, that sound of something like scraping towards Frederick
• 15:57
  and that slope pushing on his face, the crash of lightning.
• 16:00
  It's a proper like universal horror moment.
• 16:02
  It's a brilliant introduction. But then it's he got and there's
• 16:05
  this two moments of genius here. I mean the conversation to get
• 16:08
  into over Frederick pronounced at Frankenstein, which he got
• 16:12
  really takes umbrage at and you know he does.
• 16:15
  Frederick tries to calm down. Also.
• 16:16
  You must be eager. No, that's I go he.
• 16:20
  Just digs his heels in. But they told me he was eager.
• 16:23
  They were wrong then, weren't they?
• 16:25
  I mean that line he. Tried to get that into
• 16:28
  conversation as often as I can to say who gets it.
• 16:30
  I just love, love that little bit.
• 16:32
  They were wrong then, weren't they?
• 16:33
  And like, that's it. That's the end of conversation
• 16:35
  done. And then the second bit was when
• 16:38
  Frederick gives him that kind of friendly clap on the back, but
• 16:41
  he hits somebody. Just makes that, like, dull
• 16:43
  thud. Yeah, it's really awkward.
• 16:45
  And Frederick says I don't mean to embarrass you, but I'm a
• 16:48
  rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I could help you with
• 16:51
  that hump. What hump?
• 16:56
  Right end of that conversation as well.
• 16:57
  And is it just the straight face?
• 17:00
  What hump? It's just when he's just been
• 17:03
  challenging the script. Just Do you say Frederick?
• 17:04
  No. Yeah.
• 17:05
  Well, why did you say? Frederick, Frederick Funke.
• 17:08
  It's great. Yeah.
• 17:14
  And obviously the the Walk This Way gag is is a classic.
• 17:18
  Classic. Yeah, it's an old vaudeville
• 17:20
  joke, which Brooks thought was a bit crap in the edit, but he
• 17:22
  kept it in after test audiences loved it.
• 17:25
  It's great. Yeah, you need it.
• 17:26
  So that gag also has one of the most surprising real world
• 17:30
  legacies. In 1974, Aerosmith were
• 17:32
  recording their album Toys in the Attic and hit the creative
• 17:35
  form. We know where this is going.
• 17:36
  We know where this is going. Run DNC saw the film Aerosmith
• 17:43
  recording Toys in the Attic creative all one night during
• 17:45
  the sessions, most of the band minus guitarist Joe Perry,
• 17:48
  because he probably would have talked about a bit to say, the
• 17:50
  cinema nearby for a break. The film playing was Young
• 17:53
  Frankenstein. Yeah, so when they got back to
• 17:55
  the studio, Perry said the rest of the band were already thrown
• 17:58
  lines from the film back and forth and laughing about the
• 18:00
  moment. Marty Feldon tells Wilder to
• 18:02
  Walk This Way, and so was their producer Jack Douglas, who said
• 18:05
  that Walk This Way might be a great title for a song.
• 18:09
  Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, it was a hit in two
• 18:11
  decades, two different decades. Yeah.
• 18:14
  It's a great time. So I'm picking up where
• 18:16
  Frederick makes his way to the castle he's left the train
• 18:19
  station with. I go firstly, what is Inga
• 18:22
  doing? Just silent in the freezing
• 18:24
  cold, not making a sound at the back of that horse and cart.
• 18:27
  Having fun rolling NZ. Here.
• 18:31
  Would you like a rolling here? It's fun, yeah.
• 18:38
  And they set the benchmark for what expect between Frederick
• 18:46
  and Inga's relationship. It's one innuendo laden remark
• 18:49
  after another all the way through 1 overtly obvious sexual
• 18:52
  reference after another. It's laid on immediately that
• 18:55
  these two will be doing the bad thing later.
• 18:57
  Yeah, and it's just great fun. Yeah, it is great fun.
• 19:00
  She just lays it on really thick that she wants to sleep with
• 19:03
  them. She's having a.
• 19:04
  Great time though in this film she's having a wonderful she
• 19:07
  just lights up the screen every time she's on it's.
• 19:09
  Oh, she's incredible. Terry Garr.
• 19:11
  So, so funny. So with Madeline Khan playing
• 19:13
  Elizabeth, that opened the door for Terry Guard play Inga.
• 19:16
  She had originally auditioned for Elizabeth.
• 19:18
  She'd done multiple callbacks for it before being told that
• 19:21
  Khan had decided to take it after all.
• 19:23
  Bruce asked if she could come back and read for Inger instead.
• 19:26
  But with one catch. Inger was German.
• 19:28
  Could God do a German accent by tomorrow?
• 19:34
  Well, she didn't panic because by an absolute fluke, she
• 19:37
  happened to be part of the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour at the
• 19:40
  time, right? The wig stylist on the show was
• 19:42
  German, so Gar spent about an hour just chatting to her Megan
• 19:46
  Small to soaking up the rhythms and the vowel sounds.
• 19:49
  By the time she left the dressing room, she said she
• 19:51
  walked outgoing. My God this weak weighs 40 lbs.
• 19:58
  Boom. Done.
• 20:00
  That's all you need. But she also had a slight figure
• 20:03
  problem. As she put it, she'd realised,
• 20:05
  reading the script that the part of anger was, in her words,
• 20:08
  really all about boobs, and she had a slight problem in that
• 20:12
  department, but wasn't about let her get in her way.
• 20:14
  So when she turned up to the audition the next day, she was
• 20:17
  wearing a fuzzy pink sweater with the bra stuffed with
• 20:19
  several pairs of socks, and Brooks gave her the part on the
• 20:22
  spot. So then on the way to the
• 20:28
  castle, something that Brooks does all the way through this
• 20:31
  film, build an atmosphere and tension with gag after gag on
• 20:34
  top of it as well. The dry eyes creating this
• 20:36
  unsettling classic horror movie setting.
• 20:38
  The howl of a wolf in the distance.
• 20:40
  Then this ludicrous werewolf, their wolf gag.
• 20:43
  Yeah, that's great. Then castle.
• 20:46
  Yeah. Why are you talking like that?
• 20:48
  I thought you want me to. You know that wolf owls are Mel
• 20:53
  Brooks. Yeah, crazy.
• 20:56
  Couldn't keep himself. No, you couldn't.
• 20:58
  No. Then they see the castle in the
• 21:00
  distance and I got a point. There it is.
• 21:03
  And then cut to this macabre looking structure and then he
• 21:06
  goes home. That's.
• 21:10
  Brilliant. In that one word, he's able to
• 21:12
  convey such affection with this place.
• 21:14
  Great delivery. Wonderful juxtaposition with the
• 21:17
  visual of the crashing Thunder and the dramatic music queue
• 21:20
  home. Massive influence on Robert I
• 21:23
  guess this film. Loves it And finally, one of the
• 21:30
  most juvenile gags in the film, in any film, and it's glorious.
• 21:34
  It's. Wonderful.
• 21:34
  It's amazing though, yeah. I go knocks at the door.
• 21:37
  Frederick. What knockers?
• 21:40
  Oh, thank you. It's his placement as well.
• 21:50
  She's halfway carrying out of the back.
• 21:51
  Yeah, yeah, it's just spilling out already.
• 21:54
  Yeah, it's so. Funny, she says.
• 21:55
  Thank you. What he says.
• 21:57
  You're welcome. The guy wasn't scripted,
• 22:02
  according to Wilder. Brooks just told him on the day
• 22:04
  when you lift her out of the card, look at the knockers and
• 22:06
  say what knockers? Yeah, yeah.
• 22:10
  It lands. It's crazy.
• 22:11
  Totally lands. So we're finally a Castle
• 22:14
  Frankenstein. I wonder who will be inside the
• 22:17
  door? Housekeeper Frau Blue her opens
• 22:23
  the door and they keep with the setting is an unsettling sight.
• 22:27
  We're talking about Victor's first night in the castle and
• 22:29
  finding his grandfather's laboratory.
• 22:32
  Nice. Firstly, another classic Brooks
• 22:34
  gag. The reaction the horses have to
• 22:36
  Frau Blucher's name is glorious. Yeah.
• 22:40
  The story Brooks initially told Cloris Bleachman was that her
• 22:43
  character's name was close to the German word for glue, right?
• 22:46
  So getting that kind of reaction to that word from a horse is a
• 22:50
  hilarious deep cut. Wow, that is a deep cut that.
• 22:53
  Is good, yeah. But years later, Leachman said
• 22:56
  she still wasn't sure whether Brooks was joking or not, or
• 22:58
  whether he was genuinely misinformed.
• 23:00
  Because the actual German word for clue is clever, right?
• 23:03
  And when we go inside, the music blows up and we see this, the
• 23:09
  majesty of this castle. An incredible set.
• 23:13
  If you go back and watch the 1931 Frankenstein, this looks
• 23:16
  like the same set. It does, yeah.
• 23:18
  That's the kind of attention to detail that you'd be forgiven
• 23:20
  for thinking that Mel Brooks wasn't really bothered about in
• 23:23
  his work. Yeah, but this is incredible.
• 23:25
  Oh yeah, and the production design on Young Frankenstein was
• 23:28
  Dale Hennessy. He created the sets on Fox's
• 23:31
  Stage 5 near Century City, LA. It was 15,000 square feet with
• 23:35
  walls 35 foot high. The reception hall alone had 15
• 23:39
  foot doors and a fireplace that measured 6 feet by 10, and the
• 23:43
  total bill for the sets came to $400,000.
• 23:46
  They didn't scrimp on it, they chose as well.
• 23:49
  Oh, definitely, yeah. Brooks described the castle as
• 23:51
  looking like it was made from sweat and stone, like it was in
• 23:54
  the mountains where mist had settled on the surface, leaving
• 23:56
  it all wet. You get that atmosphere, yeah.
• 24:00
  And then you've got the moment where blue car is leading them
• 24:02
  up the stairs. Brooke said it was one of the
• 24:04
  hardest scenes to shoot, which is quite strange if you watch
• 24:07
  it. Not technically, but because
• 24:08
  Gene Wilder found it hilarious. When Inga says that the
• 24:11
  staircase could be treacherous, Leachman said it should turn to
• 24:14
  deliver. The line should see Wilders face
• 24:16
  just split in two, laughing. That needed 15 takes to get it.
• 24:20
  Wow. Yeah, Leachman said that
• 24:22
  everything she did in the film just tickled Jean to bits.
• 24:25
  Yeah, absolutely. It's when she says follow the
• 24:27
  candles and the candles aren't. Even.
• 24:32
  Lit follows the candles. And then we're upstairs in
• 24:39
  Frederick's room, and it all becomes stranger still.
• 24:42
  Cloris Leachman is incredibly measured and methodical in her
• 24:45
  delivery, offering the good doctor a Brandy.
• 24:48
  Some warm milk, perhaps? No, thank you very much,
• 24:55
  Ovaltine. And while it takes that long
• 24:57
  pause before snapping at her, nothing.
• 25:02
  Thank you. I'm a little tired and I will
• 25:06
  say goodnight, goodnight. Goodnight.
• 25:12
  That vom milk dialogue was improvised by Cloris Leishman as
• 25:16
  well. Oh nice.
• 25:17
  No, that's great stuff. It's so, so funny.
• 25:20
  Yeah, so after a bizarre dream, we'll hear some music.
• 25:24
  It's behind the bookcase. So.
• 25:26
  He gets to investigate. I mean, this moment between the
• 25:29
  two of them, I mean, this is just some great slapstick, some
• 25:32
  great physical comedy and just just really great use of the set
• 25:36
  and just really great use of the detail of the set.
• 25:39
  Oh, it's like, you know, you've got to reach for the right
• 25:41
  device or something like that. He goes and pulls the book out
• 25:44
  and. Nothing happens yet.
• 25:47
  Slowly puts it back. They will try the candle and
• 25:49
  then when that candle comes out and the whole book is spins and
• 25:52
  he spins with it and obviously it's over ramped and it's speed
• 25:54
  up and that just adds to it as well.
• 25:57
  Like this whole sequence, I was watching it and I was going,
• 25:59
  Spielberg seen this, and he's just putting all of this at
• 26:01
  last. Week.
• 26:03
  The rats are in there. There's all that, you know,
• 26:05
  coming down with the candle and following.
• 26:07
  It's just all kind of very, very just rang a little bell with me,
• 26:10
  but it's like put the candle back.
• 26:13
  And then when I heard that, that was a really funny line.
• 26:15
  But then it reminds us a temple to doom when it's like we are
• 26:17
  going to. Die.
• 26:21
  How much of this is going to take on?
• 26:23
  This is absolute genius. I'm just taking this and this is
• 26:25
  where we're going to get the comedy from.
• 26:27
  But it's absolutely fantastic. When he gets the idea, just
• 26:29
  block the bookcase with his body.
• 26:33
  Why do that? I thought this guy's a genius,
• 26:35
  but it's just it's a perfect cut because you see him working
• 26:38
  towards it, you see where it's going to hit, and then it hits.
• 26:40
  And I almost wish this had cut a little bit later, but then it
• 26:44
  cuts back a while and it's still really funny.
• 26:46
  Yeah. It's just just rushing it and
• 26:47
  put all your weight behind it. And she goes round and she
• 26:50
  repeats the line, put the candle back.
• 26:52
  And then that's. Great, I love her running push
• 26:54
  on the bookcase. Yeah, that's good with all of
• 26:57
  our weight. Then she just gets then softly,
• 26:59
  kind of pushes it a little bit. It's just really funny.
• 27:01
  It just spins around. It's just that use of the set as
• 27:04
  well as grey. But then when we actually see
• 27:05
  where they're walking down and we're like what's this set just
• 27:08
  left from 1931 and it's just got cobwebs in it.
• 27:11
  And now with just with I've just put a camera, they can't believe
• 27:14
  we found this. Well, might as well make Young
• 27:15
  Frankenstein. That's how it feels.
• 27:17
  And it starts getting really kind of deep because you just,
• 27:19
  you forget about that moment of slapstick and you're in this
• 27:21
  place and you have to take it seriously because it is so
• 27:23
  believable. And you see in like 1 year dead,
• 27:27
  six months dead, 3 months dead, freshly dead.
• 27:30
  And then it's I go and he says bow.
• 27:33
  But it's just that that initial bike blast from Feldman when
• 27:41
  he's just bang and it's just that jump scare.
• 27:43
  You expect some music in there and it's totally flat.
• 27:45
  They don't have any music whatsoever.
• 27:48
  It's the same ego, he says. I go Frederick.
• 27:52
  Back and forth. They're both getting the names
• 27:54
  wrong because it's just that kind of a moment.
• 27:56
  There's that bit when they are coming down the stairs and he's
• 27:59
  trying to comfort Inga. It's just a rat.
• 28:02
  Filthy slimy, right? That's wonderful.
• 28:10
  I really like to say that. It is.
• 28:12
  So the follow the music, and then this is a moment in
• 28:15
  Wesley's kind of touching out already, but it's when he
• 28:17
  realizes the level of detail that's gone on here, that the
• 28:20
  amount of money they've spent on a comedy is spoof comedy as
• 28:24
  well, and how it shot through with the love of the genre that
• 28:27
  it's spoofing. Because the music's incredible.
• 28:29
  It's really spindingly, but it's that slow pullback that reveals
• 28:33
  all that cobwebbed equipment with that, you know, kind of
• 28:37
  imaginary dialogue from Frederick's ancestors playing
• 28:39
  off at the top. It's such an incredible shot.
• 28:41
  I mean, not the first time I've said this all will be seen, but
• 28:44
  it's a moment where if you didn't know this was a comedy
• 28:46
  somehow because there's no jokes in this little bit, you'd think
• 28:49
  this was a genuine universal horror.
• 28:52
  Yeah. That was definitely done in the
• 28:54
  30s because it looks like it. But then obviously you get some
• 28:56
  wonderful dialogue he between Frederick and Igor.
• 28:59
  What a filthy mess. I don't know.
• 29:01
  Little paint, few flowers, couple of old pillows.
• 29:05
  Just so funny. Yeah, Thor Pillows has read.
• 29:07
  That just tickles me for some reason.
• 29:09
  It's so good, Yeah. So it's so.
• 29:11
  Specific. It's a really specific thing.
• 29:14
  Like what? How would he know what a throw
• 29:15
  pillow is? Exactly.
• 29:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Living in that place.
• 29:24
  And then they find the reading room and I just love how Wilder
• 29:27
  he is, so delightfully hammy throughout this scene.
• 29:30
  Like so dramatic when he finds something.
• 29:32
  Look at this in the books called How I Did It by Victor, and it
• 29:38
  just ends on that one way. So deranged.
• 29:41
  Inga and Ego have fallen asleep because he's so enraptured in
• 29:44
  the spoken. He's in that heavy breathing,
• 29:47
  he's gone through it all. It could work.
• 29:51
  Wide eyed Wilder. Hello.
• 29:53
  Yeah. Plays out such a straight face
• 29:56
  to balance all the comedy out, but then you just get that punch
• 29:58
  in of the gag at the end of that picture of his grandfather
• 30:01
  looking, like, delighted. Yeah.
• 30:05
  Amazing. That's great.
• 30:08
  So good. We talked about the authenticity
• 30:11
  of it. Brooks and his team wanted the
• 30:12
  lab to feel exactly like the 1931 original, and during pre
• 30:16
  production they made an incredible discovery.
• 30:19
  The man who had designed and built all of that original
• 30:21
  equipment was still alive. His name was Kenneth Strick
• 30:24
  Faden. He was in his 70s.
• 30:25
  He was living in Santa Monica, basically just down the road.
• 30:29
  Not only was he alive, he had kept the entire lot in his
• 30:32
  garage. Incredible.
• 30:33
  Yeah, Brooks went over to see him strickfard and showed Brooks
• 30:36
  the gear. He flipped a switch and the
• 30:38
  whole thing fired up exactly as it had on the Universal Sound
• 30:41
  stages in 1931. Just kept it all turned on in
• 30:43
  his garage. Amazing how big's his fucking
• 30:45
  garage. After more than 4 decades
• 30:50
  sitting in the garage, the equipment still worked.
• 30:52
  Wonderful. Wonderful.
• 30:53
  Incredible. And then a wonderful touch by
• 30:55
  Brooks here, because he not only made a deal to rent the
• 30:58
  equipment, he gave Strict Faden the screen credit he'd never
• 31:01
  officially received on the original Frankenstein.
• 31:03
  Wow. 4 decades just sitting in the garage.
• 31:05
  I couldn't even find me headphones this morning.
• 31:10
  Strict Fadden didn't just hand over the props and disappear, he
• 31:13
  came on the set himself. He was present throughout the
• 31:15
  laboratory chute, operating his own equipment, bringing his 43
• 31:19
  year old creations back to life. He also designed and built brand
• 31:22
  new pieces specifically for this film.
• 31:24
  Wow, so good. Incredible, Brooke said.
• 31:27
  They basically wouldn't have a film without that equipment.
• 31:30
  Yeah. Definitely wouldn't, yeah.
• 31:32
  It wouldn't have worked. It wouldn't have worked.
• 31:34
  At all So dramatic wait and Hollywood history all rolled
• 31:37
  into one hilarious first act of Young Frankenstein.
• 31:40
  Amazing. The director.
• 31:47
  The first outing for the legendary Mel Brooks on our
• 31:50
  classic show Not Before Time as well.
• 31:52
  This was the 4th film of his directorial career following The
• 31:55
  Producers, The 12th Stairs and Blazing Saddles.
• 31:58
  He also Co created a classic TV show Get Smart Yes, so he kept
• 32:03
  himself busy. He Co wrote this film but first
• 32:06
  his work as director on Young Frankenstein.
• 32:08
  Westie. I think he does a wonderful job
• 32:10
  as a director on this because he knows exactly what his
• 32:12
  influences were. You can tell that these hearts
• 32:15
  in the right place here. It's not just his brain, and I
• 32:17
  think a lot of the brain is Wilder and a lot of the heart is
• 32:20
  Mel Brooks. He brings a lot of like just a
• 32:23
  real love of the genre, I think. I think he saw the 1931
• 32:26
  Frankenstein. He's five years old and went to
• 32:28
  theatre to watch it with his brother.
• 32:29
  It's like something, but from when you're 5, you've got to
• 32:31
  have a real love of it. All of the techniques that they
• 32:34
  use, they move the camera. It's for a reason.
• 32:36
  You move the camera. It's on a Dolly track.
• 32:37
  They'll just go for a push and they don't just use a push and
• 32:40
  use a zoom lens. There's some very Brooks moments
• 32:42
  in it, but I don't know if that's down to the right now,
• 32:44
  whether that's down to the direction.
• 32:46
  But I think Marty Feldman takes a lot of the Brooks kind of
• 32:49
  carrot day breaks the 4th wall. He has them little slapstick
• 32:52
  moments, but I think he plays it better than Brooks ever could.
• 32:55
  If I go, it wouldn't have worked out all.
• 32:57
  It would have just been the Metal Brook show.
• 32:59
  And I think it's really great that he's not in the film and
• 33:01
  concentrates on the direction with the all the other actors
• 33:04
  because he can give them his full attention.
• 33:06
  And that's what I feel he does here.
• 33:07
  It doesn't feel like he's distracted.
• 33:09
  It feels like he's completely focused on the characters.
• 33:11
  He's completely focused on what he's button on.
• 33:13
  The screen is even completely focused on the transitions.
• 33:16
  I mean, there's an iris in, iris out, there's wipes, there's
• 33:18
  fades, everything that would have been used in the Universal
• 33:21
  Era. There's even a love heart as
• 33:23
  well, isn't there? That's a.
• 33:25
  Little play on that iris. It's like, well, how you're
• 33:27
  going to do an iris in, but just make it funny.
• 33:29
  How do you make it Mel Brooks? And it just feels like he's got
• 33:31
  a stamp on this, but it doesn't feel like it's permanent.
• 33:33
  Mark. I scribbled all over it with Mel
• 33:35
  Brooks initials on it. It just feels like it's part of
• 33:37
  a collaboration, which is why I really love it.
• 33:39
  There is some Brooks moments in there.
• 33:41
  There's a little bit of slapstick.
• 33:43
  There's a little bit of, you know, you can tell with bits of
• 33:45
  his in the script that needed to be put in there.
• 33:47
  He tries to make a little bit more clever sometimes and I
• 33:50
  think while I pull the bang goes, no, this needs to be
• 33:52
  stupid, but seriously stupid. And there's that moment in it.
• 33:55
  I think he does a great job of directing it because this is his
• 33:58
  inspiration as a director and he gets to do it for real.
• 34:01
  Yeah, incredible stuff. You can see that he's got a lot
• 34:03
  of real love for this. Massive love of the period,
• 34:06
  massive love of the genre. It's just so, so good.
• 34:09
  Yeah, very similar. I mean, I think sometimes Brooks
• 34:11
  spoofs something because he just wants to take the piss out of
• 34:14
  it. I don't think that's the case.
• 34:16
  Yeah, I think not at all. As we said, if he can somehow
• 34:18
  disregard the jokes and just look at kind of very small
• 34:20
  snippets from a purely visual standpoint, you'd easily believe
• 34:23
  this came back from the Universal without doubt.
• 34:27
  Yeah, easy. Yeah, Yeah, definitely.
• 34:29
  Like Wesley mentioned that the edits and the wipes, I mean, I
• 34:32
  think that slight hiss they have on the audio because audio
• 34:35
  recording back then was a lot more primitive.
• 34:37
  That's such an intricate little detail, but he's put it in there
• 34:41
  and you know, we've mentioned the lab equipment.
• 34:44
  Brooks doesn't find any of that funny.
• 34:45
  He knows what's funny and that's obviously in here, but he
• 34:48
  doesn't find those films as a genre funny.
• 34:50
  He completely respects the craft that went into them and he wants
• 34:53
  to pay a tribute to it. So we know he's funny and all
• 34:56
  that is on display here. Word play, visual Galax,
• 34:59
  slapstick, but it's all really disciplined.
• 35:01
  And I think, you know, not for the first time, compare this to
• 35:04
  Blaze and Saddles, which obviously came out the same
• 35:06
  year. So it's a very fair comparison.
• 35:08
  Oh yeah. I don't get a sense from that
• 35:10
  that Brooks loves Westerns that much.
• 35:12
  No, I think he's angry with them, quite frankly.
• 35:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Angry just wanted to take the
• 35:17
  piss. And you know that that is a
• 35:18
  funny film, but it's all over the place at the same time.
• 35:21
  This one is really tight and it's got a discipline and a
• 35:24
  certain reference to it and that just makes it all more
• 35:27
  effective. Yeah, I mean, I'm the same as
• 35:29
  you guys. Unlike as usual approach to
• 35:31
  direct, and this is really is an outlier in the Brooks Canon.
• 35:34
  There are no wings at the camera, not really.
• 35:37
  No outrageous cameos, not too many outrageous sight gags.
• 35:41
  I go be in the biggest of them all, obviously.
• 35:43
  Yeah, The reason that this hits better than anything in his
• 35:46
  career is because he plays it straight, and that's what all
• 35:49
  the best comedies do. If you look at the likes of
• 35:52
  Airplane, it's a ludicrous film, but it's played straight.
• 35:55
  Yeah, when we talked about Ghostbusters, it's an amazing
• 35:59
  comedy, but it looks serious and you've got serious talent behind
• 36:02
  the camera. Turn the volume down and they
• 36:04
  look like dramatic films. Yeah, American Werewolf Another.
• 36:07
  One American Werewolf. Absolutely.
• 36:08
  Yeah. And comedy in these situation
• 36:10
  plays so much differently, more impactful, just better.
• 36:13
  Looking at those opening credits, how dramatic, how drawn
• 36:16
  out, lofty music creating an unsettling atmosphere before
• 36:20
  transitioning to Castle Frankenstein, which visualizes
• 36:23
  what we've already heard. Then the jokes just sit on top
• 36:25
  of this atmosphere and love for the genre.
• 36:28
  Yeah, I think you can tell Brooks has taken this seriously
• 36:30
  with the talent that he had behind the camera.
• 36:32
  Real legends in their field lovingly restoring a bygone era.
• 36:36
  This point will come up again and again, I'm sure, as we talk.
• 36:38
  And we'll get into the crew as we go for costume designer
• 36:42
  recruited Dorothy Jenkins, a legend.
• 36:44
  Yeah, She was the first ever recipient of an Oscar for
• 36:47
  costume design for her work on Joan of Arc in 1948.
• 36:50
  She also worked on prestige pictures like The 10
• 36:52
  Commandments, The Music Man, The Sound of Music and True Grit.
• 36:56
  Incredible. Yeah.
• 36:57
  Great stuff. Described by Brooks as one of
• 36:59
  the best costume designers that ever worked in Hollywood, he
• 37:02
  gave a complete freedom with two stipulations.
• 37:05
  Firstly, the costumes had a look like they could have been pulled
• 37:07
  out of Universal's wardrobe department in 1931.
• 37:11
  And secondly, this is classic Brooks designed the female leads
• 37:14
  costumes to short as much cleavage as they were allowed.
• 37:18
  Yeah. Classic Brooks the.
• 37:19
  Mixer wildest colour pops open at some point whenever.
• 37:22
  That's amazing. Yeah, it's so funny.
• 37:27
  In the cleavage thing, I mean, it wasn't just pure titillation.
• 37:30
  It's a nod to how pre code Hollywood dressed its women.
• 37:33
  Yeah. So even by honouring the genre
• 37:35
  and treating it with reverence, he's still able to crowbar a few
• 37:38
  gags in there. So behind the camera, serious
• 37:41
  dramatic talent and in front of the camera, serious comedic
• 37:43
  talent. A wonderful balance and act
• 37:45
  which I think Brooks gets just right.
• 37:48
  Yes, spot on. From a directing point of view,
• 37:50
  I could do without those crash zooms.
• 37:53
  And I go brick in the 4th wall. Yeah, but those are classic Mel
• 37:56
  Brooks. So you know what you expect.
• 37:58
  Really. Yeah.
• 37:59
  But what he does here is bring restraint, reverence and
• 38:02
  maturity, and in doing so creates, I think we all agree,
• 38:05
  his best work by a distance. Definitely.
• 38:08
  Few film makers had a better 1974 than Mel Brooks.
• 38:11
  He kicked the year off with the release of Blazing Saddles in
• 38:14
  February, and he closed it out with Young Frankenstein in
• 38:16
  December. And the idea for Young
• 38:18
  Frankenstein started on the set of Blazing Saddles.
• 38:20
  More of that on the writing section, no.
• 38:22
  Yes, of course. Yes, we'll get right into that.
• 38:24
  Definitely. What's different about this film
• 38:26
  compared to other Mel Brooks films is that the great man
• 38:28
  doesn't appear on screen himself.
• 38:30
  He Co wrote the film with Gene Wilder, and Wilder insisted that
• 38:33
  Brooks not play a part in the film because he had a tendency
• 38:36
  to break the 4th wall even when he didn't mean to, just by
• 38:39
  virtue of being Mel Brooks. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:41
  Yeah. Wilder wanted Young Frankenstein
• 38:43
  to be played straight with no wings to the audience.
• 38:45
  So the deal was if Brooks stayed off camera, Wilder would do it.
• 38:48
  Brooks couldn't keep himself out entirely though.
• 38:51
  As you mentioned earlier, he does play the werewolf,
• 38:53
  werewolf, werewolf. He plays werewolf for the stars.
• 38:59
  He pops up as a villager near the end and he is the voice, the
• 39:03
  voice of the noise of the screaming cat during the dart
• 39:06
  scene. That's.
• 39:07
  Right. Yeah, Amazing.
• 39:11
  Nice. I'm a little tired.
• 39:12
  Nice grouping. And he wanted to pay homage to
• 39:16
  the great Universal Frankenstein movies of the 30s, specifically
• 39:20
  1931's Frankenstein and 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, both of
• 39:25
  which were directed by James Whale.
• 39:27
  But he also took inspiration from the sequels Son of
• 39:30
  Frankenstein from 1939, and Ghost of Frankenstein, which was
• 39:33
  1942. Yeah, yes.
• 39:36
  He had so much reverence for those films that he also
• 39:38
  provides the voice of Victor Frankenstein.
• 39:41
  We mentioned it earlier, Mimic and the dialogue from the 1931
• 39:44
  Frankenstein film, right? He plays that completely
• 39:46
  straight as it. I he does, yeah.
• 39:48
  So Brooks, history of the source material goes all the way back.
• 39:51
  As I mentioned, he was five years old in 1931 when he first
• 39:53
  saw Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and he was
• 39:56
  absolutely petrified. Well, you know, five years old.
• 39:59
  Five years old. Yeah, that's going to happen.
• 40:01
  So much so that he asked his mother if they could shut the
• 40:03
  window by the fire escape in their Brooklyn apartment.
• 40:06
  He was convinced the monster was going to come through the window
• 40:08
  and eat him. Yeah, classic.
• 40:12
  He told this story about something that his mother said.
• 40:15
  Incredible parent. She thought about it for a
• 40:17
  moment and then walked him through the whole journey, step
• 40:20
  by step. She said the monster lives in
• 40:21
  Romania. Romania isn't near the ocean, so
• 40:24
  he's got a long way to get to a boat.
• 40:26
  He'll need money for passage. He might not have any on account
• 40:29
  of being a monster, possibly not having any pockets.
• 40:31
  Even if he managed to get on a boat and might dock in Miami,
• 40:34
  not in New York. And even if it docked in New
• 40:36
  York, he wouldn't know the subway system.
• 40:39
  And if he made it to Brooklyn, he wouldn't know what street
• 40:41
  they lived on. And even if he found the street,
• 40:43
  the people on the 1st floor had their windows open, so if he was
• 40:46
  hungry, he'd eat them first. Brilliant.
• 40:51
  So you're safe I. Wonder where he's got his
• 40:53
  storytelling the buildings from? The original plan was for Young
• 40:58
  Frankenstein to be a Columbia picture.
• 41:00
  Brooks had a deal in place for 1.9 million.
• 41:03
  Contracts were signed and hands were shaken.
• 41:05
  Done deal. The wheels came off though, as
• 41:07
  Brooks was on his way out. He leaned back into the office
• 41:10
  and then just casually dropped in that he was planning to film
• 41:13
  it in black and white to honour the tradition of the Universal
• 41:16
  movies. And according to Brooks, what
• 41:18
  followed was a herd of Jews chasing him down the hall,
• 41:22
  telling him that there was no way there.
• 41:24
  Was a brief attempt at a compromise.
• 41:25
  Columbia said they'd shoot on colour stock and screen it in
• 41:28
  black and white important markets like New York, Chicago,
• 41:30
  LA, then run it in colour in other places, for example, like
• 41:34
  Peru, who had just got colour TV and movies right, Right.
• 41:37
  Brooks's instinct was that this was a bit of a stitch of waiting
• 41:40
  to happen. He didn't interest them not to
• 41:41
  flip everything the colour as soon as the camera stopped
• 41:44
  rolling, so he said no. Columbia said the deal was off
• 41:47
  and they were left floundering. Fortunately, had a willing
• 41:49
  partner waiting in the wings. Alan Ladd Junior had just taken
• 41:52
  over a 20th Century Fox Brooks's producer Michael Kruskov, knew
• 41:56
  from their days as agents together in London.
• 41:58
  So the script went over to Fox the same night Lad rang back and
• 42:02
  said it absolutely should be made in black and white.
• 42:04
  Amazing. He said.
• 42:05
  The budget should be bigger, maybe 2.2 million or 2.4
• 42:08
  million. So they were back on track.
• 42:10
  Incredible. Yeah.
• 42:11
  That's the kind of turn around you want.
• 42:13
  Exactly, just someone completely agreeing and then giving you
• 42:15
  more money. And that decision turned out to
• 42:21
  be the start of a very long relationship.
• 42:23
  As part of the deal, Brooks signed A5 year contract with Fox
• 42:27
  in the studio went on to release a string of his films.
• 42:29
  Silent movie, High Anxiety, History for the World Part 1,
• 42:33
  and Robin Hood, Men in Tights all came out of that
• 42:35
  arrangement. Wow.
• 42:37
  Wonderful. It worked out for Ladd as well.
• 42:39
  Young Frankenstein took 86 mil at the box office and it played
• 42:41
  a big part in him being promoted to president of Fox.
• 42:44
  Yeah, brilliant. In 1976.
• 42:45
  From there, lad ended up green light and over 300 films,
• 42:48
  including Star Wars, Alien and Blade Runner.
• 42:51
  Wow. Good business.
• 42:52
  Incredible. And now it's time to introduce
• 42:55
  our first question from an ATRM patron.
• 42:58
  That's one of the benefits. If you become a patron of all
• 43:00
  the right movies, you can ask us questions for the films we're
• 43:02
  talking about. And the first one comes from
• 43:04
  Isabel Shaw. Hi, Isabel.
• 43:06
  Hi, Isabel. Hello, Isabel.
• 43:07
  Isabel, clearly a big fan of your Young Frankenstein?
• 43:09
  She asks. Every year my husband and I sit
• 43:12
  down to watch Life of Brian on Christmas night and Young
• 43:15
  Frankenstein on Hogmanay. Now Hogmanay is New Year's Eve
• 43:18
  in Scotland for people outside of the UK.
• 43:21
  Yes, indeed. Nice.
• 43:22
  Isabel said. Do any of you have any film
• 43:24
  watching traditions? What films and when and why?
• 43:27
  Thanks for all your work. If you read this out, please say
• 43:30
  hi to my husband Andy. Well, hello, Andy.
• 43:32
  Hello, Andy. As well.
• 43:34
  Big shout outs thanks to the question.
• 43:35
  Isabel as well. Westie over the youth first Sulu
• 43:39
  in The Shining every Sunday, but on top of that.
• 43:45
  Sunday. Fun day, man, every day.
• 43:47
  No, I mean, Christmas is a classic, isn't it?
• 43:48
  It's always the same. It's just a Wonderful Life and
• 43:50
  Scrooged. And then I try to fit in Lord of
• 43:52
  the Rings around Christmas because that's when it came out
• 43:54
  and always seems quite Christmassy to me.
• 43:55
  So over the Christmas period I'll put that on.
• 43:58
  If it's snowing, I have to watch The Shining.
• 44:01
  Right. Nice.
• 44:01
  If it's snowing outside, it has to be done and I just put a
• 44:04
  jumper on and stare out the fucking window shining on one
• 44:08
  side. I'm doing that every single
• 44:09
  time. Coming back from the pub was a
• 44:11
  classic tradition. Doesn't happen as much now, but
• 44:13
  when I was younger, like mid 20s, it would always be like
• 44:16
  Predator, Highlander, Point Break Commando, Die Hard, Any of
• 44:20
  them would just be on summer's day.
• 44:22
  I've got this thing where if it's a really sunny day and if
• 44:25
  I've got a couple of hours, like if I'm getting ready to go out
• 44:27
  somewhere or whatever else. It's such a weird thing, but I
• 44:30
  watch BMX Bandits and I don't know, it just reminds us of
• 44:35
  being a kid and it being sunny outside and it just like I
• 44:38
  wasn't allowed to play out at a certain time that I have to
• 44:40
  finish your dinner or whatever else.
• 44:41
  And I watch beam experiments now go out and play after that.
• 44:43
  And it just really reminds us that gives us that feeling.
• 44:45
  And then recently I've got this tradition the way if I get any
• 44:48
  new gear. So I'm a photographer by trade.
• 44:50
  So if I buy anything new the first time I got like me on
• 44:53
  camera and bought it for myself. When I started my own business,
• 44:55
  which was like 1520 years ago, I watched 7.
• 44:58
  When I opened my first camera, 7 was on.
• 45:01
  And I just have that in my head of like looking through all the
• 45:04
  menus and seven was on in the background.
• 45:05
  And then every time I get a new bit of kit, no matter what it
• 45:07
  is, I have to put 7 on before open it.
• 45:09
  Right. Wow.
• 45:10
  Very. Superstition.
• 45:12
  I think so, yeah, kind of. It's just very, very comforting
• 45:15
  to have that on. It's normally like the library
• 45:17
  moment when like he's going to the library.
• 45:19
  It's a houses for culture. And then I know it's it's around
• 45:21
  that bit. Yeah.
• 45:22
  And then any Sunday, anything. Everything on.
• 45:29
  The Sunday yeah, I put the D100 on the laptop and then watch
• 45:31
  Zulu on the main telly, but turn the sound down on Zulu and then
• 45:34
  turn the D100 black and white on the laptop and watch 2 of once.
• 45:40
  No, you still don't believe I do that, but I definitely.
• 45:45
  Yeah, I came round to get something from you a few months
• 45:48
  ago and it was just casually the D under on the.
• 45:52
  Background. That over to you.
• 45:57
  I mean, yes, some similar again obviously Christmas is a big
• 46:00
  one, but outside the specific Christmas films, it's Lord of
• 46:04
  the Rings for me as well. That's definitely only really
• 46:06
  watched in December for me, usually probably 2-3 days before
• 46:09
  Christmas itself. I think that's when it came out
• 46:12
  at the cinema. Source managed me that also that
• 46:15
  period between Christmas, New Year, I have to watch where
• 46:18
  Eagles there at some point that week off work where Eagles there
• 46:23
  is going on at some point. Brilliant.
• 46:25
  Then I think during the summer I've just always associated the
• 46:28
  original indie trilogy with summer holidays, so I'll watch
• 46:31
  those across the summer months. And I mean obviously Jaws
• 46:34
  because of July the 4th and the other one I always watch every
• 46:38
  summer has to be the burbs because that just reminds me of
• 46:42
  the six week summer holiday as a kid.
• 46:44
  Late nights. Late nights rent the burbs, late
• 46:47
  nights the burbs was on constantly.
• 46:49
  I put that on. I can like smell the barbecue in
• 46:51
  the freshly cut grass. It's amazing.
• 46:54
  Superb. And then the other one, once it
• 46:55
  starts to go kind of dark evenings again and not Halloween
• 46:59
  as such. Maybe morning, November.
• 47:01
  Shutter Island has to be our time, yeah?
• 47:04
  Yeah, I love it. Fantastic.
• 47:06
  Yeah, Well, I think we've clearly all got these little
• 47:09
  traditions and starting chronological order from the top
• 47:12
  of the year onwards. Wonderful, obviously.
• 47:17
  Yeah, yeah. Don't miss any out.
• 47:18
  Good Friday. I'm skipping ahead a few months.
• 47:20
  Good Friday, Good Friday morning, it's Ben Hur.
• 47:23
  Or at least some of it. Right.
• 47:26
  Yeah, Cherry race and that's it on the afternoon, always longer
• 47:30
  Friday without feel, start to finish.
• 47:32
  Always. Yeah, Easter morning is
• 47:34
  unusually reserved for Easter Parade.
• 47:37
  Oh, OK, right. Which is a great film.
• 47:40
  Right, OK. And then every Friday the 13th,
• 47:43
  obviously it's one of the Friday the 13th.
• 47:46
  The Burbs is a summer film for me.
• 47:48
  Matt. Halloween gets fired up on
• 47:49
  Halloween, naturally. Christmas is where it all goes
• 47:52
  crazy and it's really prescriptive.
• 47:54
  Christmas vacation on Christmas Tree Day when we put the
• 47:57
  Christmas tree up. Black Christmas on the night
• 47:59
  time. Yeah, the snowman on Christmas
• 48:03
  Eve. Morning, Meet me in Saint Louis.
• 48:04
  Die Hard plays in the afternoon, then Scrooge on the night time.
• 48:07
  It's crazy. And that's like every has to be
• 48:10
  those, otherwise something's wrong.
• 48:16
  And that's a great question, Isabel.
• 48:17
  Thank you very much. That was a great.
• 48:20
  Question. Yeah.
• 48:20
  And that wraps us up on Mel Brooks as director on Young
• 48:23
  Frankenstein, a film which he said is the best he's ever made,
• 48:27
  although you also said it's only his third funniest behind Blaze
• 48:30
  and Saddles and The Producers. Disagree.
• 48:32
  Yeah, I disagree with the second comment, but I totally agree
• 48:35
  with the first. Yeah, certainly his most
• 48:38
  accomplished. Oh, A. 100%.
• 48:40
  By far. The cast.
• 48:47
  A who's who of 70s comedic talent In Young Frankenstein,
• 48:50
  we're talking about the good Doctor, his trusty sidekick and
• 48:53
  his creation, starting with an outstanding turn from Gene
• 48:56
  Wilder, who'd established himself as a solid screen force
• 48:59
  from the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, The producers and of
• 49:01
  course. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
• 49:03
  Factory. Yes.
• 49:04
  Yes, Matt, it's over to you. I mean, I think in general, he's
• 49:07
  really underappreciated as an actor.
• 49:09
  And I think it might be that curse where if he's seen
• 49:12
  primarily as a comic actor, people don't appreciate the
• 49:14
  range and the quality of the work you do.
• 49:16
  But for some to go from the likes of, as you said, Willy
• 49:19
  Wonka, which is such a definitive performance of that
• 49:22
  character, yeah, to then the films he makes in the 80s with
• 49:25
  Richard Pryor and then all these collaborations with Brooks, he
• 49:28
  was incredible. Yeah.
• 49:29
  And I think he gets talked about more with nostalgia, culture
• 49:32
  confection, which is 100% correct.
• 49:34
  But I think he should be talked about is a real chameleon of an
• 49:37
  actor as well because he never did the same thing twice.
• 49:40
  There wasn't a Gene Wilder persona that he used in this
• 49:43
  films to come back to again and again.
• 49:45
  It was always a complete understanding of of the
• 49:48
  character and what it needed to be.
• 49:49
  And that's where you get here. And it's such a clever
• 49:52
  understanding of the type of performance this needs to be
• 49:55
  because the mannerisms, the pomposity, the deliberately
• 49:59
  slightly hammy approach to the dialogue, it's exactly the type
• 50:02
  of performance you do get in the 1940s in this genre because that
• 50:06
  was the style back then. It was very theatrical.
• 50:08
  It wasn't very not realistic. And that's what he nails.
• 50:11
  We know he can do comedy because that's in his blood.
• 50:13
  But this is the level above that, like as a contemporary
• 50:16
  actor, to adjust your performance or feels like it
• 50:19
  really could have come straight out of the 40s.
• 50:22
  Just saying. That's true brilliance, and
• 50:23
  that's what Wilder is here. Yeah, I think it's nothing short
• 50:26
  of sensational. I think really is.
• 50:28
  I mean, I don't think this is hyperbole.
• 50:29
  It's one of the great comic performances of the silk
• 50:32
  radiation that ever has been. Yeah, definitely.
• 50:34
  He has it all. Such a deft touch of delivery
• 50:37
  and screen presents. But it's the little details that
• 50:39
  I love. Yeah.
• 50:40
  When Elizabeth arrives and he introduces, this is Elizabeth my
• 50:45
  financier, my fiance. Or his reaction when he's trying
• 50:54
  to get in the sack with Elizabeth when she shows him
• 50:56
  when she just shows up and she just completely blocks him and
• 50:59
  he Mumbles his way out of that room.
• 51:01
  The big ones. Bye.
• 51:07
  I don't think it really gets noted that near the end that
• 51:11
  Frederick has just had sex with Inga by raising the platform and
• 51:14
  when Elizabeth arrives 5 minutes later he's trying to get
• 51:19
  straight in there as well. A very virile man.
• 51:25
  Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So Brooks gave Wilder pointers
• 51:28
  throughout the shoot because he knew Wilder eventually one of
• 51:30
  the directors own films one day, Woman in Red, obviously classic
• 51:34
  Brooks would do something on set, then turn Wilder and say
• 51:37
  something like say what I have to do there because I didn't
• 51:39
  shoot the close up earlier. Don't do that.
• 51:41
  And while I look at him and ask who you're talking to, and
• 51:43
  Brooks would say you. When you're directing, it sounds
• 51:47
  like Frederick reckons. We're.
• 51:49
  Talking, Talking to you. While the would make his
• 51:52
  directorial debut a year later with The adventures of Sherlock
• 51:56
  Holmes's Smarter brother. Yeah, didn't really RIP up
• 51:59
  trees, that one. Not really, no, no.
• 52:01
  Not so much, but he did go on to have a decent directorial
• 52:04
  career. Yeah, he did, yeah.
• 52:06
  And Wilder wanted to wear mustaches Frederick, but Brooks
• 52:08
  hated the idea. So they shot the same scene two
• 52:11
  ways, one with it, one without. Brooks watched both back and
• 52:14
  admitted Wilder was right. The Tash stayed in and Brooks
• 52:17
  said Gene has never looked more handsome than when he was
• 52:20
  playing Young Doctor Frankenstein.
• 52:23
  I agree. Yeah, great, Tash.
• 52:25
  Yeah. By the last day of shoot, Wilder
• 52:27
  was still pitching Brooks new scenes, whole sequences that he
• 52:30
  wanted to add. Brooks had to sit them down and
• 52:32
  say, Gene, it's over. It's got a beginning, the middle
• 52:34
  and end. It's beautiful.
• 52:36
  And Wilde buried his face in his hands and said, Mel, I don't
• 52:38
  want to go home. I want to stay here.
• 52:40
  This is the happiest time of my life.
• 52:42
  Wonderful. That's.
• 52:44
  Great. I mean, nobody said that Young
• 52:46
  Frankenstein was the best film he'd ever made as well, even
• 52:49
  considering Willy Wonka. Yeah, right.
• 52:51
  Yeah, Yeah. So outstanding.
• 52:52
  Doesn't cut it for Gene Wilder here.
• 52:54
  And comic master class as Frederick Frankenstein,
• 52:57
  Definitely. Next up, a British comic who
• 53:02
  built his reputation from his own TV shows of the 60s and 70s.
• 53:05
  An iconic turn from Marty Feldman, as I go.
• 53:08
  And Feldman is an unusual man. It's very much so.
• 53:12
  Very much so. And quite the conundrum, because
• 53:15
  he hadn't been in too many more movies of Naughty after this and
• 53:18
  he hadn't been in many. You've only been in a couple
• 53:20
  before. Died quite young though, didn't
• 53:22
  he? He did die quite young, you're
• 53:24
  right, yes, But it is a shame that we didn't see more of him
• 53:27
  because he's he's wonderfully bananas.
• 53:30
  He very much in keeping with the surrealist comedy of of Monty
• 53:34
  Python. I think he's from that mould.
• 53:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. He's always at hand with the
• 53:38
  skier than quip or a known wink to the audience.
• 53:40
  Again, something I kind of could do without, but that wouldn't be
• 53:45
  a Mel Brooksville if it didn't happen.
• 53:46
  Well, exactly. Yeah, but what I find most
• 53:48
  interesting about filming is is his physicality.
• 53:50
  He looks like you could pick him up with one hand, slither around
• 53:54
  the place. He doesn't look quite human, in
• 53:57
  the nicest possible way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:00
  I mean his outfit doesn't really help you don't see.
• 54:02
  Much of it's. Like a shadow, isn't he?
• 54:03
  Yeah, just. A shadow like himself.
• 54:05
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that really fits the
• 54:07
  character of Igor, fits the setting, the narrative, his
• 54:11
  place in the world, when he sat down next to the monster, when
• 54:14
  they're talking about the Abby normal brain.
• 54:17
  So he doesn't have any arms. He's that thin.
• 54:20
  Yeah, yeah. And there's an absolute Peach of
• 54:22
  a scene when Elizabeth first arrives at the castle.
• 54:24
  All four actors and in the scene are on top form when Frederick,
• 54:27
  introducing Elizabeth, is his financier.
• 54:29
  It's ludicrous. Elizabeth's absolute disgust.
• 54:33
  And I go, darling, surprise, love me.
• 54:40
  But it's absolutely incredible. The bit where Frederick tells I
• 54:44
  got to get the bags. Any replies?
• 54:47
  OK, you take the bland and I'll take the one with the toilet.
• 54:52
  The minute Feldman delivered that line, the whole cast went
• 54:55
  take after take. Just uproarious laughter.
• 54:58
  Unsurprising when he's biting away at the mink around.
• 55:04
  Hilarious when she whacks him over the head with a purse as
• 55:06
  well. Yeah, really good.
• 55:08
  Feldman's line of comedy might not be to everybody's tastes,
• 55:11
  but I think he really puts his own stamp on this character.
• 55:13
  The film would have been less of an identity without him in the
• 55:16
  cast. Oh yeah, Like you said, if that
• 55:18
  was Brooks playing this, it just wouldn't work.
• 55:20
  Not at all, no. And he's got a part to play in
• 55:22
  the majority of the funniest moments in the film.
• 55:25
  Oh. 100%, yeah. He really, really makes a
• 55:27
  difference here. So there was only ever one
• 55:29
  choice for Eagle and Wild. I had written the part with
• 55:32
  Marty Feldman in mind and as soon as Feldman was offered it,
• 55:35
  he just took it straight away, obviously.
• 55:36
  Of course he did. Yeah, yeah, it would have been
• 55:38
  material he's been given. Yeah, he's.
• 55:41
  Probably looked at it thinking I can add loads to this.
• 55:43
  Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. And he does.
• 55:45
  And he really does. And one thing that often gets
• 55:48
  asked about Feldman in this film is how he achieved that book.
• 55:50
  I'd look and the truth is that as a child he had Graves'
• 55:54
  disease, but the surgery he had to correct it went wrong and
• 55:57
  suddenly left his eyes permanently like that.
• 55:59
  Wow. Brooks called filming the most
• 56:01
  delicious and the most frustrating actor that he'd ever
• 56:04
  worked with. He said his time was completely
• 56:06
  separate from the rhythm of everybody else on set.
• 56:09
  So funny. Brooks's instruction to the
• 56:10
  camera operator was very simple. When Marty's talking, don't take
• 56:14
  it upon yourself just to cut. Keep the camera rolling.
• 56:17
  And the scene where this paid off best is the dinner scene
• 56:20
  where Angus is, you've hardly touched your food.
• 56:22
  And Feldman then delivers this slide about never forgetting
• 56:25
  what his father said when at times like this.
• 56:28
  And then just go silent for a long time, just leaves it
• 56:30
  hanging in the air. And Brooke said it actually felt
• 56:32
  like an hour. Yeah, because there's a cut,
• 56:34
  isn't there? There's a cut in the in the
• 56:36
  edit. Yeah, yeah.
• 56:37
  I would have loved a little bit more time on that.
• 56:39
  Yeah, a little bit more time, a little bit.
• 56:40
  More. It would have been great.
• 56:41
  But then eventually Wilder cracks and asks, well, what did
• 56:45
  he say in Feldman's supply? What the hell are you doing in
• 56:47
  the bathroom day and night? Why don't you get out of there?
• 56:49
  Give someone else a chance. Yeah.
• 56:53
  Full that whole potato, yeah, that's that makes it because it
• 57:00
  says it's funny, but it's just that.
• 57:03
  He's thinking about what he's. Thinking about what he's.
• 57:05
  It's got nothing to do with anything.
• 57:07
  Yeah, it's in hearts back, like his dad telling him to finish
• 57:10
  his dinner and just like the child that he's being, like he's
• 57:13
  not allowed to cook his food unless his mom does it for him.
• 57:15
  All of these things going through my head of like just the
• 57:18
  whole potato in his mouth still. Hilarious.
• 57:21
  That's great. Brooke said afterwards he asked
• 57:23
  the camera operator why he hadn't cut, and the operator
• 57:25
  said he was on the verge and he didn't want to waste under the
• 57:28
  100 feet of film on silence. But thankfully he held on.
• 57:31
  Brooks called the moment a diamond.
• 57:33
  Definitely. Love that moment.
• 57:36
  Feldman also brought one of the film's best running visual gags
• 57:39
  to the table himself. The script with him had a hump
• 57:42
  in it, but it was Feldman's idea that the hump would move
• 57:45
  position from scene to scene without anybody ever
• 57:47
  acknowledging. And he just did it without
• 57:52
  anybody known and only realized a few days later.
• 57:55
  And Mel Brooks said, well, that's genius.
• 57:57
  I mean, it's just the spirit of the comedy.
• 57:59
  That is without getting the OK from Mel Brooks.
• 58:02
  Exactly. It's just the goal of it.
• 58:04
  I mean, if you're on that set and they're bringing in
• 58:06
  originals props and they're bringing in or 2.2 million
• 58:09
  budget and you're right in the middle of it and you're fucking
• 58:11
  around with your prop on your back just because you can.
• 58:15
  That's that's why you're so funny.
• 58:17
  It is, yeah. It takes a lot of balls.
• 58:19
  The line what hump as well. That was all his, Brooke said.
• 58:21
  It was the funniest line in the film, so bringing improv and
• 58:26
  imperfections to the screen. Feldman as Igor is a great foil
• 58:30
  to Wild as Frankenstein. Oh yes, he's wonderful.
• 58:35
  Finally, the man playing the creation.
• 58:37
  The tallest one in his class. A mute.
• 58:40
  An incredibly big mute at this point, Boyle had been in movies
• 58:45
  since the mid 60s, most notably Endure, The Candidates and The
• 58:48
  Friends of Eddie Coyle, and now we have the chance to flex his
• 58:51
  comedic muscles over the USD. He's just so good in this.
• 58:55
  What a role to play. You know, it's exactly what the
• 58:57
  blueprint is. He's seen these earlier films.
• 59:00
  He knows for a fact he's going to have to work incredibly hard
• 59:03
  to get any kind of impact on the screen, especially compared with
• 59:05
  everyone else he's acting against, acting with, or should
• 59:08
  I say. And you just really need
• 59:10
  somebody who's got that great physical presence and is
• 59:13
  prepared to play the foil, prepared to play the dumb person
• 59:18
  in the room to make everyone else look better.
• 59:21
  He's basically setting up gags for people to knock down.
• 59:23
  And he does it every single scene that he's in.
• 59:26
  He's absolutely fantastic. And he's perfect for the role
• 59:30
  because you need someone like Peter Boyle, who has this
• 59:32
  incredible way of just Landon dialogue where it has this depth
• 59:36
  and it has this real meaning. The only watch of his wizard and
• 59:38
  taxi driver. And he has when he just slaps
• 59:42
  home, he's got these stories, but they have such this
• 59:45
  reverence in this like depth to them.
• 59:47
  And I really think that's why you're custom because without
• 59:49
  that speech at the end where he has part of the brain, where he
• 59:52
  becomes eloquent, where he convinces everybody that, you
• 59:55
  know, this man's a genius and now I can be the man that I
• 59:58
  needed to be in it. That's not funny.
• 1:00:00
  That really lands in a warm way. It's really hard to really like
• 1:00:04
  for Furman. And it's it's his performance
• 1:00:06
  that does that. And it's his performance all the
• 1:00:08
  way through the film that sells that last moment.
• 1:00:11
  I mean the physical comedy that he brings.
• 1:00:12
  With the height that he's on these platform shoes and it's
• 1:00:15
  just funny again. And he's genuinely scary in some
• 1:00:19
  moments because you think he's genuinely just lost it.
• 1:00:21
  He's genuinely, you know, threatening, really good stature
• 1:00:25
  and then delivers the eloquence at the end.
• 1:00:26
  I don't think anyone else could really have replaced him, to be
• 1:00:29
  honest. I think he's tragically
• 1:00:31
  overlooked at how good he is in this film.
• 1:00:33
  I agree. I agree, not just from a comedic
• 1:00:35
  point of view either. Yeah, just just excellent.
• 1:00:38
  Just his. Comedy just comes, can only come
• 1:00:40
  from his physicality. Exactly.
• 1:00:42
  It's incredible. Yeah.
• 1:00:43
  Brooks went to Boyle after a recommendation from Wilder's
• 1:00:46
  agent. But it's seen the original
• 1:00:48
  Frankenstein when he was about 12 years old, and he said that
• 1:00:50
  it terrified him, obviously, as everybody else, definitely.
• 1:00:54
  So when it came to playing the Monster, he didn't feel the need
• 1:00:56
  to go back to watch the Karloff version.
• 1:00:58
  The performance was already there, lodged in his memory from
• 1:01:01
  being 12. Yeah, so his approach, he played
• 1:01:03
  the monster as a baby, big and ugly and scary, but freshly
• 1:01:07
  born, still trying to make sense of the world given the
• 1:01:09
  performance. A strange tenderness which
• 1:01:11
  definitely works like an innocence to it, really works as
• 1:01:14
  well. Very much.
• 1:01:15
  The look of the monster came from make up mastermind William
• 1:01:18
  Tuttle, who'd previously worked on The Wizard of Oz and Singing
• 1:01:21
  in the Rain And then challenge. Was that the 1931 version had
• 1:01:24
  bolts in the neck, but Brooks didn't want to use those because
• 1:01:27
  he was where you've copyright complications with Universal.
• 1:01:30
  So Total came up with what Brooks called a stroke of
• 1:01:33
  genius, a zipper instead. Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  You don't think that he's missing the bolts when you're
• 1:01:38
  watching this? Film.
• 1:01:39
  I honestly put that in my mind when I think.
• 1:01:43
  The big technical decision Total made was actually to borrow from
• 1:01:46
  Jack Pearce, the original 1931 Frankenstein makeup artist.
• 1:01:50
  He made Peter Boyle's monster face green because in black and
• 1:01:52
  white, green reads as dead on skin in the way that nothing
• 1:01:56
  else really does. Right.
• 1:01:57
  It's a lot flatter this. There's a lot less contrast,
• 1:02:00
  which is why Dwight Kubrick made the table Green and Doris Range
• 1:02:03
  love. Brilliant.
• 1:02:04
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  Boyle wore 6 inch platform boots to increase his height to 6 foot
• 1:02:09
  8 inches. That's big, lad.
• 1:02:11
  And underneath all of that, Boyle wore about 125 lbs of
• 1:02:15
  padding, plus prosthetics, including a bulging forehead.
• 1:02:19
  The next tip and hem stitching on the left temple.
• 1:02:21
  This resulted in five hours in the makeup chair every morning.
• 1:02:24
  And Brooks said Boyle stop complaining the moment he saw
• 1:02:27
  what those will look like in the dailies.
• 1:02:29
  Brilliant. Yeah, they do look great.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah. I love how hollow his chest
• 1:02:34
  feels when Gene Hackman is banging on it.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gene Wilder is doing the same.
• 1:02:39
  Yeah. Yeah, the other thing that
• 1:02:41
  happened to Boyle on this film changed his life.
• 1:02:43
  While he was on set in full monster makeup, he was
• 1:02:45
  introduced to Rolling Stone reporter called Lorraine
• 1:02:48
  Alterman, who came in to interview Brooks.
• 1:02:51
  Boyle asked her out then and there, monster face and all, and
• 1:02:54
  she said yes. They got married in 1977 and
• 1:02:57
  stayed married for the rest of his life.
• 1:02:59
  The wedding had a notable best man because Lorraine was best
• 1:03:02
  friends with Yoko Ono. John Lennon was being a Boyle's
• 1:03:07
  best man. Wow.
• 1:03:08
  Amazing. Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  Boyle later said of Lennon that the two of them were both
• 1:03:13
  seekers of the truth, looking for a quick way to
• 1:03:15
  enlightenment. Yeah, I love that.
• 1:03:17
  Aren't we all? Unbelievable.
• 1:03:19
  Yeah. Brilliant.
• 1:03:21
  And that's the cast. Not forgetting the incredible
• 1:03:23
  talents of Terry Garr, Cloris Leachman and Madeline Khan.
• 1:03:26
  And Tennis Mars. Yes, Absolutely.
• 1:03:28
  Combined with Wilder, Feldman and Boyle to make one of the
• 1:03:30
  greatest comedy ensembles in cinema.
• 1:03:33
  Yeah. All the right movies.
• 1:03:41
  We'll be right back. Thank you for supporting us by
• 1:03:43
  listening to the sponsors for this episode.
• 1:03:46
  Thank you for listening to our sponsors.
• 1:03:48
  And now it's back to the show. The middle.
• 1:03:56
  With the pull of his family business too powerful to resist.
• 1:03:59
  Destiny, Destiny, Noah's Gibb. And that for me as Frederick
• 1:04:03
  executes his grandfather's work. And I'm starting off here with
• 1:04:06
  the exhumation of a recent criminal.
• 1:04:09
  In the scene before, there's a great match cut of Igor's drawn
• 1:04:12
  of the monster swinging to the swinging of the body of the
• 1:04:15
  hanged Man in the same great. And it's a scene which is
• 1:04:18
  remarkably similar to that which opens the 1931 Frankenstein
• 1:04:23
  movie. It's basically the same thing.
• 1:04:25
  Frederick and I go make a night work of digging the coffin up.
• 1:04:28
  But the setting is great. It's really authentic.
• 1:04:31
  None of this looks like it's a set in LA.
• 1:04:33
  No. Not at all.
• 1:04:35
  And Brooks had bought white handkerchiefs for the crew, and
• 1:04:39
  this was something he'd started doing on his second film, The 12
• 1:04:41
  Chairs, where there was so much laughter on set he couldn't get
• 1:04:45
  a take. Sophie, Young Frankenstein.
• 1:04:47
  He bought 200 of them and told anyone not in the scene to shove
• 1:04:50
  one in their mouth the moment they felt themselves about to
• 1:04:53
  crack. So he said he was shooting this
• 1:04:55
  graveyard scene where Feldman delivers this line.
• 1:04:57
  It could be raining, and then a load of rain immediately comes
• 1:05:00
  pouring down. Great.
• 1:05:03
  It could be worse. It could be raining straight
• 1:05:04
  down. I absolutely love that.
• 1:05:05
  Yeah. So Brooks turned around at that
• 1:05:07
  moment and saw a sea of white handkerchiefs in the mouths of
• 1:05:10
  the entire crew. And he said to himself, I've got
• 1:05:12
  myself a hid here. Yeah, so confident.
• 1:05:14
  Right after that, he rang up Alan Ladd Junior at Fox and he
• 1:05:17
  said don't play it safe, spend some money on advertising and
• 1:05:21
  you'll make it back. Yeah, confidence.
• 1:05:23
  I love it, Love it. And following this scene,
• 1:05:26
  there's such an incredibly funny moment where Agora and Frederick
• 1:05:30
  drop the coffin and the body breaks loose.
• 1:05:32
  Before they can get it back together, the local constable
• 1:05:35
  comes sniffing around asking questions.
• 1:05:37
  And this is all about Gene Wilder as a comic force of
• 1:05:41
  nature, working with a dead body's arm sticking out as a
• 1:05:44
  prop the police has. If he needs a hand, no thanks.
• 1:05:49
  Have one, Have one. That's the least funny bit as
• 1:05:56
  well. To make it all seem normal,
• 1:05:59
  Frederick stretches out his left hand.
• 1:06:01
  Mimic on the dead hand. Yeah.
• 1:06:03
  Then he starts to casually pick up the nails on the fingers of
• 1:06:06
  the dead. That's just comic timing of the
• 1:06:08
  highest order. That's.
• 1:06:09
  Unbelievable. Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  And then when he reaches out for the handshake, Why?
• 1:06:12
  You're chilled to the bone. A nice won't fire would be a
• 1:06:15
  thing for you. Yes, yes, a little nip from the
• 1:06:19
  old button wouldn't be too bad either.
• 1:06:20
  Then he slaps both hands together.
• 1:06:22
  That's the chicken. Index me that every single time.
• 1:06:29
  The ticket. Yes, the ticket.
• 1:06:31
  Yes, Robin. Is smashing his foot off the
• 1:06:34
  ground right? Move.
• 1:06:38
  Oh, wow. I mean, that is just a comic
• 1:06:39
  master class. Physicality, delivery, prop
• 1:06:42
  work, reactions. Yeah.
• 1:06:44
  Comic genius. Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  Two, like two or three shots as well in the whole scene.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah, that's it. Two or three angles.
• 1:06:50
  No thanks, Have one. I have one.
• 1:06:56
  And then we go from this to the actual same way.
• 1:06:58
  He's going to try and bring this creature to life.
• 1:07:00
  And seeing all that equipment sparking and working, that's
• 1:07:04
  incredible. I mean, and that short waves
• 1:07:06
  winched up into the skies. That's horrible.
• 1:07:10
  The electricity. It's astonishing how well our
• 1:07:12
  place is like an actual horror moment from Frankenstein.
• 1:07:15
  I mean, yeah, wildest speech here.
• 1:07:17
  You know, we shall command the thunders and penetrate into the
• 1:07:20
  very womb of impervious nature herself.
• 1:07:23
  Like, genuinely, that works. Like it's a proper.
• 1:07:26
  Automatic moment. You totally forget a laugh in
• 1:07:29
  this whole sequence. Oh yeah, totally place.
• 1:07:31
  It's so straight, it's so effective.
• 1:07:33
  But then it's so effective because it can not stick to how
• 1:07:35
  hilarious the other bits are. I mean, I got getting down from
• 1:07:38
  the roof in the split second. I understand, I understand.
• 1:07:43
  Why are you shouting and you just didn't you?
• 1:07:46
  And then he just leaves it because he can't talk to that.
• 1:07:49
  He can't. Make sense?
• 1:07:50
  Of course I did, yeah. And then this conversation with
• 1:07:53
  Ingas was saying it's all double on time.
• 1:07:55
  Just elevate me. No idea.
• 1:07:57
  Yes, yes, raise the platform. Aussie platform.
• 1:08:00
  Oh, that. Yeah, yes, probably one-on-one,
• 1:08:05
  but it's so funny. Terry goes amazing in this
• 1:08:08
  scene. She's.
• 1:08:09
  Incredible. And then you just get elevated
• 1:08:11
  obviously. And like I say, it's amazing how
• 1:08:13
  long this scene actually plays out it, you know, it probably
• 1:08:18
  goes for the resurrection. I mean even the dialogue like
• 1:08:20
  throw the third switch, not the third.
• 1:08:23
  Switch. That's really funny, but it's
• 1:08:26
  the effects, it's the music, it's the sound effects as well,
• 1:08:29
  the production design. It all just comes together so
• 1:08:31
  well in this scene and obviously it doesn't work.
• 1:08:34
  And the come back down and Frederick saw.
• 1:08:36
  We will accept this with quite dignity and grace.
• 1:08:41
  It gives it 2 seconds and then starts laying into the creature
• 1:08:44
  like the toddler having a tantrum.
• 1:08:45
  I don't want to live, I do not want to live.
• 1:08:50
  The classic books Ego break in the 4th wall quite dignity and
• 1:08:53
  grace. And also during the scene,
• 1:08:56
  Brooks decided to use genuine 500,000 Volt electrical
• 1:09:00
  discharges, basically real lightning.
• 1:09:03
  Wow, it was too dangerous for a bit about the lie still under
• 1:09:06
  that. So makeup man Total made a
• 1:09:07
  fiberglass cast of his face and shoulders to use as a dummy.
• 1:09:11
  Inside the fiberglass, Total hid what he called secret
• 1:09:14
  ingredients, things that resemble brains, skull and teeth
• 1:09:19
  with self-contained lights inside them that can be pulsed
• 1:09:22
  open down with the dimmer. Fantastic.
• 1:09:24
  Yeah. When the special effects team
• 1:09:26
  through the switches, the arc started jumping just two feet
• 1:09:29
  from Wilder and grew in size and power until half a million volts
• 1:09:33
  were genuinely crackling through the air around.
• 1:09:37
  Him just insane. Isn't.
• 1:09:38
  Wilder was safe, but only because his distance from the
• 1:09:41
  electrode was always greater than that of the dummies
• 1:09:43
  distance from it, meaning the electricity would automatically
• 1:09:46
  jump to the closest object every time.
• 1:09:49
  Wow. I mean, I wouldn't be confident
• 1:09:51
  in that happening to be honest. With you Not at all.
• 1:09:53
  And as this is the most dramatic sequence in the film, it feels
• 1:09:55
  right to ask our second Atrm patron question.
• 1:09:58
  This one is from Caleb Bailey. Hello, Caleb.
• 1:10:00
  Hi, Caleb. Hi Caleb.
• 1:10:02
  Caleb says hi guys. I love the show.
• 1:10:04
  Thank you very much. He says We all know this is a a
• 1:10:08
  farce funny on purpose. So my question is, are there any
• 1:10:11
  quote UN quote serious horror movies that just make you guys
• 1:10:14
  laugh every time you watch? He said.
• 1:10:16
  I watched Hellraiser with my daughter when she was very
• 1:10:19
  young. Best parent ever, right?
• 1:10:21
  Well yes, we've all been there. And he said all she did was
• 1:10:26
  laugh at the little guy with the chattering teeth.
• 1:10:29
  Thanks. Keep up the good work gentlemen.
• 1:10:32
  PS Any plans on doing Hellraiser?
• 1:10:35
  Not right now. Not right now.
• 1:10:37
  No, not on the radar. No, not really, no.
• 1:10:41
  Yes, yes, dear me, Caleb. Now that is a bold parental
• 1:10:44
  move. It is Hellraiser especially.
• 1:10:46
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah I've re watched it in the
• 1:10:48
  last year or so and it is it isn't pretty.
• 1:10:51
  No, it's not. It's grim.
• 1:10:53
  It's not at all, no. Please don't show her the
• 1:10:56
  sequel. Some very peculiar imagery in
• 1:10:58
  that. Very much so, yeah.
• 1:11:00
  A great question though, and I think there are many films that
• 1:11:03
  if you didn't live through them as a child they might be a bit
• 1:11:06
  laughable. Yeah.
• 1:11:07
  I've heard certain people say that number on Elm Street's
• 1:11:10
  funny. They are obviously insane.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah. The films that led to mind for
• 1:11:14
  me, firstly, Fred, the 13th Part 3, the 3D one.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah, it's ludicrous. Yeah.
• 1:11:21
  I think it's in the run of the Worst Friday sequel, really.
• 1:11:24
  Pretty much guaranteed. Yeah, right.
• 1:11:25
  I don't know, I've got a different. 10 Really.
• 1:11:28
  Which one? Just next.
• 1:11:29
  Takes Manhattan. Oh, right, yes, of course.
• 1:11:32
  Yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  He doesn't take Manhattan, He just arrives.
• 1:11:38
  In Manhattan and. Then grounds into sewer.
• 1:11:41
  But for Part 3, any opportunity to lunge at the camera with any
• 1:11:45
  old object is taken full advantage of for the 3D effect.
• 1:11:48
  It looks horrible, but the characters are so infuriatingly
• 1:11:52
  annoying. The acting is laughable and the
• 1:11:53
  protagonist biker gang are insanely non threatened.
• 1:11:57
  One of them ends up having a wonderful time at a rope swing
• 1:12:00
  for example. Yeah.
• 1:12:02
  A wonderful time. She does.
• 1:12:06
  And I'm also going to say The Howling, another film that we
• 1:12:09
  talked about, feature. Yeah, there are some moments of
• 1:12:12
  genuine terror in that film, the Open and being one of them.
• 1:12:15
  But it's the monster transformation, the big
• 1:12:17
  centerpiece, which was undercut some months later when American
• 1:12:21
  Werewolf came out. And now it all just looks a
• 1:12:23
  little bit too silly. It's a bit the animated bit.
• 1:12:27
  Yeah, Oh my God, the animated bit is horrible.
• 1:12:31
  Yeah, forgot about that. I didn't.
• 1:12:36
  The firing and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:38
  Oh God, yeah. And finally, John Carpenter's
• 1:12:41
  Christine. Yeah, I have a lot of affection
• 1:12:44
  for the film, but the central premise, the killer car, it's.
• 1:12:48
  Crap. It's great on the page, but
• 1:12:49
  yeah, visualizing that it doesn't really work.
• 1:12:51
  Yeah. No, it's not great.
• 1:12:53
  No. What about you, Matt?
• 1:12:54
  Yeah, I mean, interesting you mentioned Christine, because I
• 1:12:57
  think Stephen King Saul attempted being a director with
• 1:13:00
  maximum OverDrive. Maximum.
• 1:13:02
  OverDrive. Oh boy, that didn't age well.
• 1:13:04
  Like. Cocaine.
• 1:13:06
  It's. A hell of a drug.
• 1:13:09
  That was definitely his period. You know, don't open the old can
• 1:13:13
  of worms again. But a lot of poltergeist is
• 1:13:15
  quite silly, let's face it. Yeah.
• 1:13:18
  Fair enough. And then in the sense of, I
• 1:13:21
  don't know if it is supposed to be funny and it's a brilliant
• 1:13:24
  film and one we've covered, but I will just always think of that
• 1:13:26
  moment in Texas Chainsaw when Franklin's kicking off
• 1:13:30
  downstairs because they've all left him in his wheelchair.
• 1:13:34
  He does that, but it's when he goes to wheel out and he's in
• 1:13:37
  the mood. He jabs his hand against the
• 1:13:40
  door. If you just start sobbing.
• 1:13:42
  Quietly. I always laugh and I feel
• 1:13:47
  horrible. That's just too funny.
• 1:13:49
  That is funny. Amazing.
• 1:13:51
  Yeah, that's what you've ever been A Dick made.
• 1:13:55
  Oh. My God on film.
• 1:14:01
  Wonderful. What about you?
• 1:14:02
  Was he? I mean, yeah, there's a few
• 1:14:05
  crossovers, but I do always find the end of Nightmare on Arm
• 1:14:07
  Street. When you go through that window,
• 1:14:09
  I kind of help but chuckle a little bit.
• 1:14:11
  Yeah, I know that's. Pretty funny and it's nice
• 1:14:13
  because it's been such an intense move on that.
• 1:14:16
  That's just when you watch it with other people, like you said
• 1:14:18
  at the top, look, if you haven't lived with these films, then you
• 1:14:20
  can't be laughable. I mean, Poltergeist, I've got
• 1:14:23
  Jason Takes Manhattan Friday the 13th 8, which is always going to
• 1:14:27
  be funny, isn't it? But to me, I mean the one that I
• 1:14:29
  think is unintentionally funny and everyone finds it funny and
• 1:14:33
  I think it's more of a comedy now, is the Wicker Man remake
• 1:14:35
  with Nick Cage. Right.
• 1:14:37
  And he's like, not the bee. I have not seen it because it
• 1:14:44
  got such bad. Reviews.
• 1:14:46
  It's so unintentionally funny. I think a lot of people don't
• 1:14:49
  like being scared and look for the humour which overpowers fear
• 1:14:53
  and if they if they go, oh that's really funny that there
• 1:14:55
  is a little bit of them that might just be a little just
• 1:14:58
  trying to avoid being scared. Trying to find yeah.
• 1:15:01
  Trying to find humour and it's I think there is a lot of that.
• 1:15:03
  So going off that theory killer, I think your daughter might have
• 1:15:05
  actually been petrified of Hellraiser and just laughing at
• 1:15:07
  that guy with the charities just to try and mask some kind of
• 1:15:11
  pain that was happening there. So there might be fear, you
• 1:15:13
  never know. But I mean, that is fair enough.
• 1:15:15
  But there is that to to take into account as well.
• 1:15:17
  There is a very, very fine line between terrified and hilarious.
• 1:15:22
  A great question, Caleb. Thank you very much.
• 1:15:24
  Yes, thank you so much and. Now that Frederick's experiment
• 1:15:28
  is over, it's over to West of you on the introduction of
• 1:15:31
  another weird and wonderful character.
• 1:15:33
  Another weird, wonderful, another beautiful introduction
• 1:15:35
  of a character as well. I mean, this is just an absolute
• 1:15:38
  master class from Kenneth Mars. New plays, Inspector Kemp,
• 1:15:42
  there's only one man who can who we can count on for this moment.
• 1:15:45
  And just an eye patch with a monocle over the top.
• 1:15:48
  That's enough. But a?
• 1:15:51
  But a hand, an arm that just is just needs punching into space
• 1:15:55
  and he uses it so well. It's just that when he just
• 1:15:57
  lighten that cigar just by punching his arm in a different
• 1:16:00
  mood, like in a different situations, and it just moulds
• 1:16:04
  it's. Such a rigmarole isn't?
• 1:16:06
  It it's a rigmarole, but it's fucking unreal.
• 1:16:08
  It's like that. That's worth the scene just for
• 1:16:10
  that bit, but that's just. Choreography.
• 1:16:12
  It's incredible. It's just so well done, just the
• 1:16:15
  way he turns it round to dip his finger in the cup, fire out.
• 1:16:20
  That's it's just so Doctor Strangelove.
• 1:16:23
  Yes, it is. It just reminds me.
• 1:16:24
  It's very sellers in that performance.
• 1:16:27
  But it's just the the dialogue, the way that's played in that.
• 1:16:30
  I mean, I'm watching Allo Allo and I think the French policeman
• 1:16:33
  of Allo Allo takes a lot from this guy.
• 1:16:37
  He's pronunciation of things and it's just I mean, you don't
• 1:16:40
  still. I've seen this film about, I
• 1:16:43
  don't know, over double figures. I'd say it right easily, and I
• 1:16:46
  still haven't got a fucking clue.
• 1:16:47
  I don't know. What he's saying?
• 1:16:48
  And then the opening spiel that he's got, he says he's walking
• 1:16:51
  down. And I think that's totally
• 1:16:52
  intentional and that's fine. But the bits that we do pay
• 1:16:54
  attention to are really, really footsteps.
• 1:16:56
  Footsteps. Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps.
• 1:16:58
  That's absolutely fine, you know, it's brilliant, doesn't
• 1:17:01
  take you out the film, even though he's completely bizarre.
• 1:17:04
  Completely. Totally, totally off the wall,
• 1:17:07
  but it really, really works. For some reason.
• 1:17:09
  I still haven't got a clue how to pull this off.
• 1:17:11
  It's just an incredible, incredible character both of the
• 1:17:13
  wall and they know exactly what they're doing and that pay off.
• 1:17:17
  You know, I'll pay them a little visit, which have a nice quiet
• 1:17:21
  and that iris in it's that iris in that absolutely slams it for
• 1:17:26
  me because it's just perfect in right here.
• 1:17:29
  We'll go. This introduction is fantastic.
• 1:17:31
  It's obvious. OK, pay a visit to the good
• 1:17:34
  doctor. Have a nice quiet.
• 1:17:44
  You should have done this soon. Oh, that's great.
• 1:17:50
  And Kenneth Mars had already worked with Brooks on The
• 1:17:53
  Producers in 1968. So when Young Frankenstein came
• 1:17:56
  around, Brooks offered him Inspector Camp without much of
• 1:17:59
  an audition process. But there was one thing he
• 1:18:01
  wanted to play with him first. Yeah, Bruce called Mars and
• 1:18:04
  asked very seriously. If you earn an eye patch and
• 1:18:07
  you've got a monocle on top of the eye patch, brilliant.
• 1:18:09
  Is that too much? Mars said.
• 1:18:11
  Of course not, Brooks said. Good.
• 1:18:13
  Yeah, hired. The monocle was actually
• 1:18:14
  magnetized, holding it in place over the eye patch as well.
• 1:18:17
  Fantastic stuff. Yeah.
• 1:18:18
  It's that too much? Of course not.
• 1:18:19
  Of course not. Boom.
• 1:18:21
  Straight in. Can you be German tomorrow?
• 1:18:23
  Yes. Initially, Brooks had Dustin
• 1:18:28
  Hoffman in place to play the part of Franz in The Producers,
• 1:18:32
  right? Right.
• 1:18:33
  Yeah. But he dropped out to star
• 1:18:34
  opposite Brooks's wife and Bancroft in The Graduate.
• 1:18:37
  Made Dustin Hoffman a star, made him who he is.
• 1:18:39
  Yeah. Yeah, sure.
• 1:18:40
  Great choice. Kenneth Mars filled Hoffman
• 1:18:42
  shoes for the part of lead kind in the Producers.
• 1:18:45
  Producers. Yeah.
• 1:18:46
  And Brooks later said that if he got his first choice of Hoffman
• 1:18:49
  and the producers, Hoffman would almost certainly have played
• 1:18:51
  Kemp in Young Frankenstein. Right.
• 1:18:54
  Can you imagine? It would have.
• 1:18:58
  Been good change in Hollywood history that.
• 1:19:00
  Is absolutely, I could see it, but it's like I love Mars in
• 1:19:03
  this. I wouldn't change it for the
• 1:19:05
  world. Definitely not.
• 1:19:07
  And in this scene, the five previous Universal Frankenstein
• 1:19:10
  films are referenced when the elder said this Tough nightmares
• 1:19:13
  from five times before. This is reference to
• 1:19:16
  Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of
• 1:19:18
  Frankenstein, The Ghost of Frankenstein, and Frankenstein
• 1:19:21
  Meets the Wolfman. Brilliant.
• 1:19:24
  It knows its history. It does.
• 1:19:25
  Yeah, definitely, yeah. So Frankenstein's activities
• 1:19:28
  haven't gone unnoticed on Inspector Kemp will be paying a
• 1:19:32
  visit to the good doctor. Very nice.
• 1:19:37
  As far as Frederick is concerned, his creation has
• 1:19:39
  failed and he's pretty upset about it, but he soon finds out
• 1:19:42
  that it's alive. We're talking about that moment
• 1:19:45
  before a visit from Kemp, and then the monster is set free.
• 1:19:48
  And I'm starting off here and, and this is, I mean, this is
• 1:19:53
  Wilder on Absolute top form. Yes.
• 1:19:57
  Starts off with two beautiful moments at the dinner table
• 1:20:00
  where he's all forlorn about the experiment not working and his
• 1:20:03
  reaction when Inca says you haven't even touched the food.
• 1:20:06
  Like a petulant child, he jams his hands and food.
• 1:20:08
  There, now I've touched it happy.
• 1:20:10
  My God. My God, that's so funny.
• 1:20:14
  And then when they're talking into dessert and Frederick
• 1:20:16
  explains what the dessert is to Agor, and there's a murmur from
• 1:20:20
  the monster, which Frederick mistakes, there's a sound coming
• 1:20:23
  from I go, oh, do you like it? Who are you talking to?
• 1:20:26
  To you. You made a yummy sound.
• 1:20:38
  That delivery is irresistible, and it's uniquely Gene Wilder.
• 1:20:42
  And he's another uniquely Wilder moment.
• 1:20:44
  His reaction to seeing the monster, Oh, it's alive.
• 1:20:51
  And then stand back and he subtly approaches the body.
• 1:20:55
  Hello there, he tries to whisper through the corner of his mouth.
• 1:21:03
  It's a sedative, ready, and the reaction of Peter Boyles
• 1:21:06
  magnificent. Just his eyes alone darting from
• 1:21:09
  one side to the other is like what the fuck?
• 1:21:14
  And this is just gag after gag. All different types.
• 1:21:16
  Physical performances, funny lines for comedic grades,
• 1:21:20
  bouncing off each other as the monster strangles Frederick as
• 1:21:23
  he does his charades act. Feldman jumping up and down when
• 1:21:26
  he thinks that said a dirty word is what Frederick is trying to
• 1:21:29
  act out. I mean, what the fuck?
• 1:21:32
  He said a dirty word. Jumping up and down and the fall
• 1:21:36
  said to give thing but before ink gets it right.
• 1:21:41
  Sedative on the newsy. It's absolutely crazy.
• 1:21:49
  On the noisy, yeah. Said it gave.
• 1:21:52
  That's insane. And Brooke said the charades
• 1:21:55
  moment was one of the hardest scenes to shoot because nobody
• 1:21:57
  could keep a straight face. And he gave Boyle the
• 1:22:00
  instruction. You've really got to strangle
• 1:22:02
  him. But despite Brooks's insistence
• 1:22:04
  for Boyle to hurt Wilder, Wilder just kept laughing.
• 1:22:07
  And they kept blowing takes. Yeah, I mean, it's absolute
• 1:22:10
  chaos. Yeah.
• 1:22:12
  But the funniest thing about this whole sequence, God, I
• 1:22:16
  can't believe it exists. This when Frederick says I go
• 1:22:19
  down to have a little chat with him and he's delicate demeanor,
• 1:22:23
  he totally suck as I go in. Provides a safe environment for
• 1:22:27
  him to be honest with him. And then he pounces some ears
• 1:22:31
  and would you sit down for a moment?
• 1:22:34
  No, no up here. Thank you.
• 1:22:36
  Thank you. That brain you give me, was it
• 1:22:41
  Hans tell Brooks no. Good, good, good.
• 1:22:47
  Would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
• 1:22:52
  And you won't be. I will not be angry.
• 1:22:55
  It's the not. I will not.
• 1:22:59
  He doesn't even allow him to finish this sentence.
• 1:23:01
  Fantastic. Then the Abbey normal guy.
• 1:23:04
  I'm almost certain that's what it said.
• 1:23:06
  Yeah, Abbey normal. Be normal.
• 1:23:09
  And then it ends with him throttling.
• 1:23:12
  I go and then I go gone to the. Cherry And it reminds you of
• 1:23:17
  that moment when I go drop the brakes.
• 1:23:19
  He just, he was like frightened of himself in the mirror.
• 1:23:22
  Yeah. The only reason he's fucked all
• 1:23:24
  this? Yeah, that's great.
• 1:23:27
  That's where I go. Steals the brain.
• 1:23:29
  It's a lift from the 31 Frankenstein film.
• 1:23:32
  If you watch that scene back in the original, it's really
• 1:23:34
  difficult to take seriously now. Yeah, it is really difficult.
• 1:23:38
  Yeah, so the brain, the ego steals the one in the jar
• 1:23:40
  labeled Hans Dellbrook, scientist and St.
• 1:23:44
  There was a real Hans Dellbrook. He was a 19th century German
• 1:23:47
  military historian and a professor at the University of
• 1:23:50
  Berlin. Again, just authenticity.
• 1:23:53
  Scientist and St. Yeah, you put that on my phone.
• 1:23:57
  Decided that. Wesley, Scientist.
• 1:24:00
  Insane. Wonderful.
• 1:24:04
  And just to finish off the scene, a thud at the door.
• 1:24:07
  Frederick must wash up. He's got to look normal and his
• 1:24:09
  collar and type in pings open. Oh yeah, that's absolutely
• 1:24:14
  insane. How on earth did they get away
• 1:24:17
  with that? We have to look absolutely
• 1:24:19
  normal. Yeah, we've got to behave
• 1:24:23
  normally. It's that cut as well, straight
• 1:24:25
  from next. I'm going into when Ken visits
• 1:24:28
  the castle and you've got that one words that we've got to
• 1:24:30
  behave normally and then he's like monsters.
• 1:24:36
  Transitions. Amazing.
• 1:24:37
  It's so funny. It's straight in there.
• 1:24:41
  I just love where Kemp's just using his arm to slam it against
• 1:24:44
  the door. It's like constantly using it.
• 1:24:46
  But I mean, this sequence is so brilliant.
• 1:24:48
  The back and forth between the two of them.
• 1:24:50
  I mean, how many gags can you get out of a dartboard?
• 1:24:53
  And five darts, 8 darts, or however many there is.
• 1:24:56
  It's absolutely unprecedented how funny this is because it's
• 1:25:00
  so subtle. And, you know, he throws them
• 1:25:03
  and all land where they need to land.
• 1:25:05
  And then Kemp goes up, pulls them all out, jams them in his
• 1:25:08
  arm to carry them back for no real reason, and then just finds
• 1:25:13
  out that he's got that. You know, Frederick's got his
• 1:25:15
  back turned. So then he uses it to run back,
• 1:25:18
  stick them, and then goes he's. Grouping.
• 1:25:29
  Nice grouping and spits his water out.
• 1:25:32
  Nice group and that's absolutely brilliant.
• 1:25:35
  And then he's just keeps hitting them with all of these kind of
• 1:25:38
  accented ends of sentences that just is just a bit of gibberish
• 1:25:41
  and it's just bang. And then he he misses.
• 1:25:43
  And because you are a franker. Scene, excuse me?
• 1:25:47
  And it's just straight and then he just every time he's just
• 1:25:49
  Jarred and misses. And if you just watch this again
• 1:25:53
  and again and again, you'll find something new every single time.
• 1:25:56
  First one misses the dartboard and then you've got the second
• 1:26:00
  one goes out of the window, I think.
• 1:26:01
  And then the third one, he's got the dart backwards when he
• 1:26:04
  throws it at the cat and so it's backwards anyway and then spins
• 1:26:07
  around so it hits the cup. But you know that it's not going
• 1:26:09
  to stab the cat because he's throwing it backwards.
• 1:26:11
  So there's even that if they're going to say, oh, you've harmed
• 1:26:14
  something and it seems. There's.
• 1:26:16
  Even that playfulness to it, then they're going out the
• 1:26:18
  window. Then one goes behind him and he
• 1:26:20
  loses it and he goes forward. Just that last one is it goes
• 1:26:24
  behind him and then goes to throw it again.
• 1:26:25
  It's like, how many gags can you get out of a set of darts?
• 1:26:29
  And then that grown gag works again and that strip, and we're
• 1:26:35
  not tired of that yet at all. That's good.
• 1:26:37
  You could put that through all day, but it's just the perfect
• 1:26:41
  setup. And they're going through the
• 1:26:42
  window and you forget about it. And then Kemp leaves and there's
• 1:26:45
  just that close and there's just a dog.
• 1:26:47
  And then it comes out and you think, oh, that's the funny bit.
• 1:26:50
  It's just in his helmet. It comes out and it's like, no,
• 1:26:52
  it's in the front tyre, it's in the back tyre and it's in the
• 1:26:55
  fucking spare tyre. So they can't even change.
• 1:27:02
  And it's if that's not enough for boots, he's like, I'm just
• 1:27:05
  going to do a push in on that tire.
• 1:27:06
  Yeah, as it as it leaves. He didn't.
• 1:27:08
  Get it? Not leaving it to the audience
• 1:27:10
  to get this whatsoever as the car drives off.
• 1:27:12
  I am absolutely going to punch in on that fucking deal.
• 1:27:15
  And you get the whole thing and then you get a lovely fate of
• 1:27:18
  Black. Brilliant between the two of
• 1:27:19
  them. And absolute comedy was the
• 1:27:21
  class. I mean, the universe is smiling
• 1:27:23
  on this whole production, isn't? It, it really is.
• 1:27:25
  Everything's coming together. It really is.
• 1:27:28
  It's a beautiful thing. We're talking about all these
• 1:27:30
  brilliant actors who all get their moments to shine.
• 1:27:32
  I think the next scene is all about Cloris Leachman.
• 1:27:35
  She's amazing in this moment. Where they've confronted her
• 1:27:40
  about setting the monster free and how dangerous it is, and she
• 1:27:43
  goes, not this one. He's as gentle as a lamb got to
• 1:27:46
  him, jumping off the table and lunging after everyone.
• 1:27:50
  Yeah. But the wonderful thing about
• 1:27:52
  the scene is how she plays that violin because it's great.
• 1:27:55
  It's been established. And it makes total logical sense
• 1:27:58
  that she's been playing it all along because it calms the
• 1:28:01
  monster down. So you totally believe that she
• 1:28:03
  would have it in her position. And you know, she does use it
• 1:28:05
  here. Calm down.
• 1:28:06
  But it's then how she uses it in the rest of the scene to under
• 1:28:10
  score every dramatic accusation that Frederick goes to death.
• 1:28:15
  And she's I mean, she's shrieking by the end.
• 1:28:17
  And each stab of that violin gets more and more OTT.
• 1:28:20
  It was you who played that music in the middle of the night.
• 1:28:22
  Yes. That was your cigar smoldering
• 1:28:25
  the ashtray. Yes.
• 1:28:28
  And you would look to where? Yes.
• 1:28:29
  Say it. He was my boyfriend.
• 1:28:34
  Just the way she builds up to that, shrieking it by the end.
• 1:28:37
  Yes, she is so wonderfully audacious scene.
• 1:28:42
  Yeah, brilliant. If Victor was Frau Bluhur's
• 1:28:45
  boyfriend, how fucking old does that make Frau Blue?
• 1:28:52
  Doesn't matter. Floris Leachman went into this
• 1:28:58
  film without any instruction. Her hair, makeup and costume
• 1:29:01
  were worked out on day one. She also never done a German
• 1:29:04
  accent before and nobody thought coach her through one.
• 1:29:07
  But now you cannot tell like you.
• 1:29:09
  Can't. No, not at all.
• 1:29:11
  She basically went around the set asking anybody, excuse me,
• 1:29:14
  do you know a German accent at all?
• 1:29:16
  Three or four people said that they did.
• 1:29:18
  But the most useful one in the end was Mel Brooks, his own
• 1:29:21
  mother, who was on set at the time.
• 1:29:23
  Right. She got her closest to the
• 1:29:24
  accent that ended up on the film.
• 1:29:26
  It's great. Yeah.
• 1:29:28
  Fantastic. Yeah.
• 1:29:29
  Hilarious. So the monster is set free the
• 1:29:32
  first of three or four times that that happens in the film.
• 1:29:35
  Yeah, absolutely. But it makes for a tense and
• 1:29:38
  hilarious final act. Yes, it really does.
• 1:29:44
  The crew. As mentioned, there's still a
• 1:29:48
  crew on Young Frankenstein. The cinematography and music are
• 1:29:51
  coming up. Firstly, it's the written word
• 1:29:53
  by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder on the screenplay.
• 1:29:55
  This was their third movie collaboration, but the first
• 1:29:58
  time they had written together, based of course on Mary
• 1:30:00
  Shelley's legendary Frankenstein novel from 1818.
• 1:30:04
  My thoughts on the right now are what follows on from what I was
• 1:30:07
  saying about Brooks as a director.
• 1:30:08
  Really, this isn't an outlier in his body of work because it's a
• 1:30:11
  lot more subtle than most films he's worked on.
• 1:30:15
  Now you're thinking, how can exploding bow ties and charades
• 1:30:17
  weren't being strangled by a monster?
• 1:30:19
  Be subtle. But compared to the pour
• 1:30:23
  everything into the mix approach that he usually takes, there's
• 1:30:25
  an awful lot of restraint here, Yeah.
• 1:30:28
  There is, yeah. And I think that comes from a
• 1:30:29
  combination of Brooks's scattergun gag, a second style,
• 1:30:33
  and wild is more measured narrative approach.
• 1:30:36
  You 2 said it already. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:38
  Wild is pulling the reins. It doesn't hurt that they've got
• 1:30:45
  one of the greatest novels ever written as a backbone as well,
• 1:30:49
  of course. Yeah, but unlike Blues and
• 1:30:51
  saddles, which is hilarious, this has got a lot more room to
• 1:30:54
  breathe and tell a story and to marvel in the production design
• 1:30:57
  or linger on a music queue. Saddle throws in a gag every 5
• 1:31:00
  seconds. If you didn't like that one,
• 1:31:02
  there'll be 1 coming soon that you'll love, and you'll forget
• 1:31:04
  about the ones that you didn't. But here there's more spaced out
• 1:31:07
  and they're more methodical, meaning they have to be
• 1:31:09
  memorable for the whole thing to land as a comedy.
• 1:31:12
  Because there's not not as many of them, even though there is
• 1:31:15
  still loads. They come thick and fast, but
• 1:31:17
  the big moments live longer in the memory for me because they
• 1:31:20
  are written better. Yeah, there are a few that I
• 1:31:22
  could do without. By the little boy at the
• 1:31:25
  Transfanian train station offering a shine that doesn't
• 1:31:28
  land for me. No.
• 1:31:30
  No at all. No.
• 1:31:31
  Take it out. Yeah, there are others that
• 1:31:33
  don't land for me as well, but on the whole, Wilder and Brooks
• 1:31:36
  nail them. Really nail them.
• 1:31:38
  They're putting on the Ritz moment, the blind man scene, the
• 1:31:41
  monster awakens scene, the classroom scene at the start.
• 1:31:43
  They're big, funny moments with loads of little comic gems
• 1:31:47
  underneath. Yeah, just shimmering away.
• 1:31:49
  Yeah, yeah. A case of less is more here for
• 1:31:52
  me, even though it's a gag a second.
• 1:31:54
  Yeah. Great comedy, great restraint in
• 1:31:56
  the writing. Yes.
• 1:31:58
  I think the thing for me is if you do contrast this to Blaze
• 1:32:00
  and Saddles, Brooks Co wrote that with four other people and
• 1:32:04
  you can tell there's five voices all competing in that film to
• 1:32:08
  get their voice heard, to get their jokes and get their point
• 1:32:11
  across in Brooks is shouting across all of them, but there's
• 1:32:14
  only two voices here. The other voice is someone who
• 1:32:17
  actually came with the idea 1st and then got Brooks involved.
• 1:32:21
  So it's very harmonious in that sense, like the direction
• 1:32:24
  there's a discipline and it does feel like you've exactly said
• 1:32:28
  it. Wilder can rein Brooks back in a
• 1:32:30
  way that no one else could on saddles or anything else.
• 1:32:33
  This isn't Brooks with some other people.
• 1:32:36
  This is Wilder and Brooks 5050 it.
• 1:32:39
  I mean, obviously there are silly moments, but it could get
• 1:32:42
  really silly. And when it does nothing, that's
• 1:32:44
  Wilder's influence pulling it back.
• 1:32:47
  I think there are moments where Wilder let's Brooks have a
• 1:32:49
  couple of gags here and there that he's maybe not keen on.
• 1:32:53
  And I think you'd honestly, you can tell those because they have
• 1:32:54
  the scenes that Wilder isn't in. And that's as my take on it.
• 1:32:58
  But I do think when you compare it to Blair's and Saddles, I
• 1:33:01
  just feel that this is much more about these two finding a
• 1:33:04
  harmonious balance between what they both want this to be.
• 1:33:07
  Yeah, I totally agree. I think the the word that
• 1:33:10
  springs to mind when I think about the writing on this is
• 1:33:12
  respect. I think they've got a massive
• 1:33:14
  amount of respect for each other and a massive amount of respect
• 1:33:17
  for what they can each bring to the project.
• 1:33:18
  And both of you have said really I think Wilders position can't
• 1:33:22
  be understated. I think to be able to rein Mel
• 1:33:24
  Brooks in at this point in 74 that is that is a big way to be
• 1:33:29
  able to do that and to even convince him and not to be in
• 1:33:32
  his film. It's a massive thing just to do
• 1:33:35
  that. You can see the influence that
• 1:33:37
  he's got and then that comes to some gags being put forward and
• 1:33:39
  maybe not, but I think it's they've got a real respect.
• 1:33:42
  And the I think they both totally understand what they
• 1:33:44
  want from the finished film because it is a pleasure to
• 1:33:46
  watch and it does flow really well.
• 1:33:48
  And it does have those moments where it knows exactly what the
• 1:33:51
  tone is and knows exactly when to ramp that up to comedy and
• 1:33:54
  knows exactly when to ramp it up the heart and knows exactly when
• 1:33:56
  to ramp it up to to fear in some places.
• 1:33:59
  Because some of these moments are genuinely heartfelt and
• 1:34:02
  genuinely scary if you just watch them for the two or three
• 1:34:05
  minutes that the meant to be played out.
• 1:34:06
  There's some really, really great beats in there.
• 1:34:09
  There's some really good satire and really good nods back to
• 1:34:12
  classic Hollywood, especially the university.
• 1:34:14
  I mean, the train station goodbye is possibly the ultimate
• 1:34:18
  parody of that period of anything.
• 1:34:21
  You know the femme fatale and you've got the the hero going
• 1:34:24
  off and the trade. Brief encounter that.
• 1:34:26
  Kind of thing. Casablanca.
• 1:34:28
  Casablanca. It's got all.
• 1:34:29
  Of them elements in it, that tip of the cap.
• 1:34:31
  But it's always like, you know what?
• 1:34:32
  They're just so preoccupied with the look.
• 1:34:35
  They always looked perfect, but that was never put forward from
• 1:34:37
  the female characters. And it gives female characters a
• 1:34:39
  real platform, especially mid 70s, because no one was going to
• 1:34:43
  put female characters in there to be funny on their own accord.
• 1:34:47
  They're always bouncing off somebody else.
• 1:34:48
  So they're always there. It just be pretty.
• 1:34:50
  I mean, they are there for that reason, but they do take the
• 1:34:52
  piss out with that as well. They're just to bring that to
• 1:34:55
  the forefront and go, yeah, oh, how many nails?
• 1:34:57
  I mean, here you can't do, you can't do this.
• 1:34:58
  You can't do just the riff on it.
• 1:35:00
  And then they're dealing with it.
• 1:35:01
  And this. I just think there's a respect
• 1:35:03
  between these two as writers, but there's also a respect for
• 1:35:05
  every single person that they've cast in this film.
• 1:35:08
  It's a beautiful blueprint for them to build on and they've
• 1:35:11
  built on it perfectly. It's not too high that it
• 1:35:13
  topples, it's just perfect to watch.
• 1:35:15
  Yeah, Lords of Positives there in the right.
• 1:35:17
  Definitely. So, as mentioned before, the
• 1:35:19
  idea for the film started on the set of Blazing Saddles.
• 1:35:22
  Brooke said that one day during filming, he invited Gene Wilder
• 1:35:25
  into his trailer for some pineapple and cottage cheese.
• 1:35:28
  Unusual control? Yeah, Wilder was scribbling on a
• 1:35:31
  legal pad, which piqued Brooks's interest, and Wilder told him
• 1:35:34
  the concept for the film. Yeah, Brooks was reluctant
• 1:35:37
  because there'd been so many Frankenstein movies.
• 1:35:39
  But Wilder said that what if the grandson of Doctor Frankenstein
• 1:35:42
  wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever, ashamed of
• 1:35:44
  all the wackos that came before him, just trying to make it as a
• 1:35:47
  serious, respected scientist in his own right.
• 1:35:49
  And Brooks thought that was funny.
• 1:35:51
  He said, Gene, you can't write this alone.
• 1:35:53
  You need a genius like me to write it with you.
• 1:35:55
  And if I like it, maybe I'll direct.
• 1:35:58
  Brilliant. It's really, yeah.
• 1:36:00
  He asked Wyler if he had any money on him.
• 1:36:02
  Wilder said he had $57. Brooke said it's a start and
• 1:36:06
  pocketed it as a down payment with the agreement that he
• 1:36:09
  direct if you like. But the two of them came up with
• 1:36:12
  amazing $57. So the two of them started
• 1:36:15
  working on the script in the evening, said Wilder's Bungalow
• 1:36:17
  at the Hotel Bel Air. After their day's work on
• 1:36:20
  Blazing Saddles had wrapped, Brooke said they wrote over Earl
• 1:36:23
  Grey tea and English digestive biscuits, doing rewrite after
• 1:36:26
  rewrite on each scene until they were happy with it.
• 1:36:29
  Brilliant. You can tell that they've
• 1:36:30
  written it to within an inch of it.
• 1:36:32
  Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
• 1:36:34
  Like Brooks, Wilder's connection to the material was personal.
• 1:36:36
  At first, he didn't really know why he was drawn to it, but
• 1:36:39
  later realized that from a young age, he'd seen the 1931 film and
• 1:36:42
  was terrified of it. Of course, he saw all four of
• 1:36:45
  the Universal Frankenstein movies between the ages of about
• 1:36:48
  8:00 and 10:00, and they stayed with him.
• 1:36:49
  So when he came to writing on Frankenstein, what he really
• 1:36:52
  wanted after all these years was a happy ending.
• 1:36:54
  He wanted to take the thing that scared him and rewrite.
• 1:36:58
  Right. OK, yeah, and Wilder and Brooks
• 1:37:00
  maintained A harmonious relationship, but they did blew
• 1:37:02
  up once the two of them were working on the film that
• 1:37:05
  Wilder's apartment one day got into a row and Brooks had a full
• 1:37:08
  screaming fit before storming out. 10 minutes later, though,
• 1:37:11
  the phone rang at Wildest Place, and it was Brooks on the event.
• 1:37:14
  He asked Wilder who was that madman you had in your house and
• 1:37:17
  advised him that it was dangerous to have crazy people
• 1:37:19
  around. Wilder recognizes as a Mel
• 1:37:21
  Brooks apology. And they were fine from then on
• 1:37:23
  in. That's a great story, So the
• 1:37:26
  best writing that Brooks and Wilder ever did, helped in no
• 1:37:30
  small part by Shelley's classic novel and James Wales's classic
• 1:37:33
  movies. Next is the dramatic music for
• 1:37:38
  Young Frankenstein composed by John Morris, a frequent
• 1:37:41
  collaborator with Brooks whose relationship goes all the way
• 1:37:44
  back to TV and Broadway productions of the 50s and 60s
• 1:37:47
  and all the way up to Brooks's Life Stinks in the early 90s.
• 1:37:51
  Matt John Morris's music for the film.
• 1:37:54
  What do you think? Superb stuff, very harmonious.
• 1:37:57
  I mean, harmonious is the word. I would describe the film
• 1:38:00
  because everything music, cinematography, production
• 1:38:02
  design, no one doesn't understand what the job is here.
• 1:38:06
  No one is given freeway and to do what they want and bring
• 1:38:09
  something really personal to the table.
• 1:38:10
  There are strict boundaries of what they can do here because of
• 1:38:13
  the nature of the film. But that's a challenge in and of
• 1:38:15
  itself, because there's some elements of the film that aren't
• 1:38:18
  being spoofed. Like the special effects aren't
• 1:38:20
  there to be laughed at, they're there to look exactly how they
• 1:38:23
  were and they still work as, you know, a piece of drama.
• 1:38:25
  And it's the same with the music.
• 1:38:27
  There's nothing contemporary but create a score that would be fit
• 1:38:30
  in actual film starring Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi and make
• 1:38:34
  it fit. And that's exactly why you've
• 1:38:36
  got here. It's mimicry, but it also can't
• 1:38:39
  sound like mimicry, and it doesn't.
• 1:38:41
  It's an original imitation and that's incredibly hard to do.
• 1:38:44
  Yes, it is. Yeah.
• 1:38:46
  What are your thoughts on it Westie?
• 1:38:47
  Yeah, I mean, it's it's exactly the same as Matt's really.
• 1:38:50
  I think it's got a really romantic feel to the whole
• 1:38:52
  thing. It feels like these are just
• 1:38:55
  outtakes from the older films that they didn't use.
• 1:38:58
  They've. Just they've, they've taken them
• 1:39:00
  and just went, oh, we've found these as well as we've found all
• 1:39:03
  these and we'll just rehash these.
• 1:39:05
  It's got that much of A tone, but it also has quite a quite a
• 1:39:09
  modern feel for the 70s. I think it just, it feels
• 1:39:11
  cleaner. It feels like it's been recorded
• 1:39:13
  with better equipment. It feels like the technology was
• 1:39:16
  there and it's just got this real clean feel to it.
• 1:39:18
  But it does it just matches what you see on the screen so
• 1:39:21
  perfectly. It's used in the film when it is
• 1:39:23
  used is perfect because it just, it really accentuates and really
• 1:39:28
  backs up everything that you're seeing on the screen.
• 1:39:29
  There's some really beautiful bursts of music and then
• 1:39:32
  nothing. The opening credits are
• 1:39:34
  fantastic. Closing credits are fantastic.
• 1:39:36
  I think there's just so many different ideas and different
• 1:39:39
  themes running through this whole film.
• 1:39:41
  It gives it that variety, same as you see in between the comedy
• 1:39:44
  and the tragedy. I think you've got that in the
• 1:39:46
  music as well. It really is a wonderful,
• 1:39:47
  wonderful piece of work from John Morris.
• 1:39:49
  Yeah, I agree. Yeah, Yeah, it's a hat, Rick.
• 1:39:52
  I think it's like a great one of the great quiet weapons that the
• 1:39:56
  film has. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:39:57
  That's that's a good way to describe it, yeah.
• 1:39:59
  I think it would have been very easy to write a comedy score for
• 1:40:01
  a comedy film. Wink at the audience, undercut
• 1:40:04
  every gag. Certainly that's what Mel Brooks
• 1:40:06
  has done in the future. Yeah, that's a safer way to do
• 1:40:09
  it. It is, yeah.
• 1:40:10
  But he doesn't do any of that. And I know that he would have
• 1:40:13
  been given that instruction by Mel Brooks as well, of course.
• 1:40:16
  But he treats Young Frankenstein exactly the way that Steiner or
• 1:40:19
  Waxman would have treated a 1935 Universal horror picture, for
• 1:40:23
  example. Full orchestra, lush strings,
• 1:40:25
  brass when the mood calls for it.
• 1:40:27
  No irony whatsoever. And that main theme, it's, it's
• 1:40:30
  just a perfect example of it. The soul violin, plaintive
• 1:40:33
  romantic, like you said, Westie, the kind of melody that
• 1:40:36
  genuinely could have rolled out of the universe lot 40 years
• 1:40:40
  earlier. Like you said, it's that's the
• 1:40:42
  tone of the whole film. Before a single line of dialogue
• 1:40:45
  is spoken, it's going to be a love letter played straight,
• 1:40:48
  mirror and all. The crew work as well.
• 1:40:50
  Yeah, and I think it's bigger than just nostalgia.
• 1:40:52
  The score does the heavy lifting of the films actual themes.
• 1:40:56
  It carries the loneliness of the monster, the grandeur of the
• 1:40:59
  family legacy, the romance with Inga and the tenderness
• 1:41:02
  underneath all of it, big and bold, quietly heartbreaking.
• 1:41:05
  I think it's the secret ingredient for me.
• 1:41:08
  Yeah, it's really, really great. Definitely elevates the film.
• 1:41:12
  The centrepiece of Morris's score in this film is that main
• 1:41:15
  theme, the Transylvania lullaby we all know the one.
• 1:41:17
  Mournful, melodic, stunningly beautiful perform straight as a
• 1:41:21
  die. It's the heart of the entire
• 1:41:23
  film, yeah. And Brooks gave Morris a
• 1:41:25
  conceptual brief, not a tune. He told him this is a horror
• 1:41:29
  film. Basically, in writing, scary
• 1:41:30
  music would to be totally inappropriate.
• 1:41:33
  The score isn't about the horror, it's about the monster.
• 1:41:35
  So write me the most beautiful Eastern European lullaby you can
• 1:41:39
  that's going to become the heart of the monster that'll be his
• 1:41:42
  childhood, Morris understood instantly.
• 1:41:44
  Because, as he later put it, Bruce always goes for the
• 1:41:47
  emotional centre of something. Nice, they've got a good working
• 1:41:50
  relationship. Definitely.
• 1:41:51
  I mean, you take this score and put it over it.
• 1:41:53
  Make a horror film and put this score over the top of it.
• 1:41:55
  It works. Totally works.
• 1:41:56
  Absolutely. After Morris died in 2018,
• 1:41:59
  Brooks summed it all up perfectly.
• 1:42:01
  He said he was my emotional right arm.
• 1:42:03
  Music tells you what to feel, and he knew what I wanted you to
• 1:42:06
  feel. Oh, wonderful.
• 1:42:07
  Beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:42:08
  Need a hand, John? No, I've got one.
• 1:42:10
  I. Have one, I have one.
• 1:42:15
  So a fitness score for a movie drenched in 30s monster movie
• 1:42:18
  nostalgia, matching the visuals perfectly.
• 1:42:21
  Definitely. Finally, a cinematographer who'd
• 1:42:26
  been in the biz since the 40s, Gerald Hirschfeld Wesley, It's
• 1:42:30
  over to you, love. Hirschfeld work in this.
• 1:42:32
  It's so, so good. Arthur Edison, who did
• 1:42:36
  Frankenstein in 1931, who was the DP on that?
• 1:42:38
  John J Mescal was the DP on Bride of Frankstein in 1935.
• 1:42:43
  And those two were the main sources of inspiration.
• 1:42:45
  And to get them to and say it right, well, I'm going to do
• 1:42:48
  this in 1974. Most labs had stopped processing
• 1:42:51
  black and white film stock at this point.
• 1:42:53
  I mean, he's using diffusion on the lenses here.
• 1:42:56
  This was shot on the Panavision standard prime.
• 1:42:58
  So they put a lot of diffusion on it, get that soft focus look,
• 1:43:00
  especially on the close-ups, which is very, very much
• 1:43:02
  universal. The camera was made in 1967,
• 1:43:05
  right? So it was fairly new at the
• 1:43:07
  time. It was a Panda vision PSRR 200,
• 1:43:10
  which was lighter, and it was easier to kind of move around to
• 1:43:13
  the earlier camera. So it was quite a modern look.
• 1:43:15
  I mean, to give you some idea, Star Wars was shot on that
• 1:43:17
  camera, Empire Strikes Back, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
• 1:43:20
  Clear, close Encounters, Live and Let's Die, right?
• 1:43:24
  So you've got these really punchy, really colourful, really
• 1:43:26
  energetic films and they take that kind of equipment and then
• 1:43:29
  bring it back down with his use of lighting, his use of
• 1:43:33
  blogging, his use of framing is just so classic and so
• 1:43:37
  methodical and so well thought through.
• 1:43:38
  And I think it was almost too good that I think Brooks would
• 1:43:42
  have just went, is this a comedy or is this just so straight?
• 1:43:46
  I think it might have been too good at that point because it
• 1:43:49
  really, really sells this film for me.
• 1:43:51
  It really does. The word by Hirschfeld cannot be
• 1:43:53
  understated by anything. The writing can be spot on.
• 1:43:56
  You can get all the right props. You can have the absolute set
• 1:43:59
  and spend 2.2 million. But if you are not lighting that
• 1:44:02
  right, if you're not shooting that right, if you're not doing
• 1:44:04
  that, like I said, you know the train goodbye.
• 1:44:06
  If you're not back like that and making that smoke work and just
• 1:44:09
  having them strips of light coming through on the male
• 1:44:11
  character and the female character.
• 1:44:12
  If you're not sitting with them in the bed at the end at the,
• 1:44:15
  you know, the climax of the film, for the want of a better
• 1:44:18
  phrase, but they're sat and there's just that beautiful
• 1:44:20
  strip of light that's just highlighting just that moment
• 1:44:23
  that you need the monster. The way that that's lit, it's
• 1:44:25
  low down to make them look taller.
• 1:44:26
  There's all of these different techniques and all of this is
• 1:44:30
  brought. He's just having an absolute
• 1:44:32
  headache. But that's what makes the film
• 1:44:34
  work because it's so seriously shot.
• 1:44:37
  It's so beautifully shot. It's so well lit.
• 1:44:40
  It's so well thought through. That's what makes it funny
• 1:44:44
  because the humour comes through that.
• 1:44:45
  And if it wasn't serious and if it wasn't shot by a genius and
• 1:44:48
  knew exactly what he was doing and he's not parodying anything.
• 1:44:52
  He's not, he's not parody. He's shooting this as serious as
• 1:44:55
  if he's going to shoot, you know, another like the third in
• 1:44:57
  the Frankenstein series. You know, given this type of
• 1:45:02
  assignment to have that I would on the back of my mind thinking
• 1:45:05
  I'm just parodying something here.
• 1:45:07
  I'm not really making anything new or anything fresh.
• 1:45:09
  But he's elevated to a salute. Classic films and made a comedy
• 1:45:13
  out of it. It's astonishing work it.
• 1:45:16
  Really is. Yeah.
• 1:45:17
  Such a class act. The depth and texture of the set
• 1:45:20
  and the location are brought to life by Hirschfeld.
• 1:45:23
  I think these places feel real, to feel lived in.
• 1:45:26
  It really feels like this is his shot to make a universal horror
• 1:45:29
  movie. Brooks and Wilder can take care
• 1:45:31
  of the guys. I don't think Hirschfeld's
• 1:45:33
  bothered about that at all. He wants to make this look and
• 1:45:35
  feel and act like a classic gothic horror movie like.
• 1:45:38
  Exactly. Yeah, he should not have gone
• 1:45:40
  this hard. No, he didn't need to.
• 1:45:43
  No. And he does all of that by
• 1:45:45
  utilizing I think all of the frame.
• 1:45:47
  There is no wasted inch. Brooks went big on the
• 1:45:49
  production design like we said and Hirschfeld really basks in
• 1:45:52
  it. I think particularly like I
• 1:45:54
  said, neither start when Frederick enters the castle.
• 1:45:56
  The scale and the authenticity is is breath taken in that wide
• 1:45:59
  shot. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:01
  And the lab scenes, everything in sharp focus.
• 1:46:04
  It just feels legit, of course, because you you know, the maze
• 1:46:07
  and crew work and 10 strick fins.
• 1:46:08
  Electric genius, but Herschel makes it look and feel like a
• 1:46:12
  real working lab. And to shoot black and white,
• 1:46:15
  that's doing so much of the heavy lifting.
• 1:46:17
  Every shadow, every shaft of light through a castle window,
• 1:46:20
  every smoke filled forest. Herschfeld treats them with the
• 1:46:23
  reverence of someone who genuinely wants to be making the
• 1:46:26
  30s monster picture rich contrast.
• 1:46:29
  The blacks are deep and you get those classic gothic
• 1:46:31
  compositions, figures framed in doorways, light and carving of
• 1:46:34
  the sky, faces half lit by candles.
• 1:46:36
  I mean, it's classic stuff, but it really is.
• 1:46:39
  It's classical stuff. Beautiful work.
• 1:46:41
  It's classical stuff, but it's really refined.
• 1:46:44
  It really is. Yeah, I mean, it's perfect.
• 1:46:47
  It is absolutely deliberate. 1 needs to be the frame and the
• 1:46:50
  use of slow push insurance, very deliberate camera moves.
• 1:46:53
  Like I love that opening where it moves in and around the
• 1:46:56
  coffin to get that force with the that's amazing.
• 1:47:00
  But it's not done too fast because I would take you out of
• 1:47:03
  it. And then to perfectly replicate
• 1:47:05
  the light and the use of candles, use of torches, use of
• 1:47:08
  shadows, that bit when Frederick and I go escaping through the
• 1:47:12
  streets with a coffin. You know, I've said this one,
• 1:47:14
  talk about Brooks and the film in general, but take out the
• 1:47:16
  jokes. If you didn't know, you'd be
• 1:47:18
  convinced you're actually watching a Frankenstein film
• 1:47:21
  series intent from the 30s. That's how good this looks.
• 1:47:24
  Yeah, it really does. Hirschfeld came to the project
• 1:47:28
  pretty much by chance. He just turned down another
• 1:47:30
  film, which remains nameless, that he had a bad feeling about,
• 1:47:34
  and he was sitting at home with no follow up work lined up when
• 1:47:37
  Brooks called him in for an interview the very next day.
• 1:47:39
  Yeah, Hirschfeld walked into the room expecting kind of a
• 1:47:42
  technical conversation, but instead Brooks immediately
• 1:47:45
  started winding him up about inventing fake errors in films
• 1:47:48
  Hirschfeld had shot. So he asked, for example,
• 1:47:51
  whether the white tub in Diary of a Mad Housewife had been
• 1:47:54
  overbright. Hirschfeld took the criticism
• 1:47:56
  seriously at 1st and got more and more upset before he
• 1:47:59
  realized there isn't a bathtub in Diary of a Mad Housewife.
• 1:48:06
  So Hirschfeld eventually fired back with one more derogatory
• 1:48:09
  remark about my work, and I'll leave.
• 1:48:11
  And the two of them broke up laughing and we're on the same
• 1:48:13
  wavelength immediately. Lovely.
• 1:48:16
  And what's interesting is that Brooks actually studied
• 1:48:18
  Hirschfeld's work very closely, closely enough to fabricate
• 1:48:21
  believable sounded errors. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:48:23
  That's amazing. Yeah.
• 1:48:25
  By 1973, Hirschfeld had built up ACV that was an unusually strong
• 1:48:29
  bridge between dramatic black and white work like Fail Safe in
• 1:48:31
  64 and prestige colour naturalism like Diary of a
• 1:48:34
  Madhousewife, Child's Play, The Lou Met film, not the 80s horror
• 1:48:38
  film Chucky. Yeah, this was exactly the kind
• 1:48:43
  of dual track technical experience a 1974 black and
• 1:48:47
  white pastiche of a 1931 horror film was going to need as far as
• 1:48:51
  Brooks was concerned. Yeah.
• 1:48:52
  Initially, though, Hirschfeld pushed back on the black and
• 1:48:54
  white photography. He suggested to open the film in
• 1:48:57
  black and white for the Transylvanian sequences, then
• 1:49:00
  segue into colour once the story moves to modern day.
• 1:49:02
  And it was, it was, and Bruce held firm, and Hirschfeld came
• 1:49:07
  around to it within a few days of seeing the dailies.
• 1:49:10
  Yet the black and white wasn't just appropriate, it was
• 1:49:13
  actively making the film better. Absolutely.
• 1:49:17
  True, yeah. It's about texture and about
• 1:49:19
  depth. Isn't over any. 100% But there
• 1:49:21
  was a light problem. Mid shoot, Brooks pulled
• 1:49:24
  Hirschfeld aside and said that he wasn't happy with the look of
• 1:49:26
  the film. But this made Hirschfeld erupt.
• 1:49:29
  You and Jean Screamie Frankenstein and Bride of
• 1:49:31
  Frankenstein, before we started, you said remind me of the look
• 1:49:35
  of the originals, and that's where I'm giving you.
• 1:49:37
  Brooks argued that he wanted to satirize the look of the
• 1:49:39
  original films. Hirschfeld swab.
• 1:49:41
  This was never explained to him, but Wilder back his argument up.
• 1:49:45
  Now there you go. To get over this little issue,
• 1:49:47
  Hirschfeld brightened close up so the comedy would read on.
• 1:49:50
  The actor's face is easy, but kept the wide shots Moody James
• 1:49:54
  Wheel style. He also got the production
• 1:49:56
  designer to repair the cavernous 30 foot sets in light the tones
• 1:49:59
  to help bounce the light off. Yeah, right.
• 1:50:01
  Yeah. He also had a supervised changes
• 1:50:03
  in the fall labs black and white processing mid shoot because
• 1:50:06
  they hadn't processed like you said Wesley a black and white
• 1:50:09
  film in years and they didn't know how to do it.
• 1:50:12
  Yeah, that's dead. Don't do that anymore.
• 1:50:14
  Yeah, and Castle Frankenstein had no electricity except in the
• 1:50:18
  lab, which meant Hirschfeld had to like most of the film, as if
• 1:50:21
  every room was being illuminated by oversized fireplaces,
• 1:50:25
  candelabras and wall torches. The wall torches and fireplaces
• 1:50:29
  were piped with propane gas and then plastered over to look like
• 1:50:32
  2 foot thick stonework. Real logs in the fireplaces were
• 1:50:35
  a fire hazard which you couldn't control, so the production used
• 1:50:38
  concrete logs. The flickering firelight effect
• 1:50:40
  bouncing on walls and faces was created by silk strips of fabric
• 1:50:44
  fluttering in front of out of camera lamps, with brightness
• 1:50:47
  raised and lowered on the dimmer.
• 1:50:49
  Chris, I mean, you just take for granted, don't you?
• 1:50:51
  But it's so technically proficient.
• 1:50:53
  Yeah. And intricate.
• 1:50:54
  All of this work so integrate. Yeah.
• 1:50:56
  Each candle in the film was a hollow aluminium pipe with a
• 1:50:59
  real wax candle stuck on top and a 100 Watt projection bulb
• 1:51:03
  concealed in an open slot just below the candle.
• 1:51:06
  An electric wire ran up the actor's sleeves and down their
• 1:51:08
  trouser leg to a hidden dimmer off stage.
• 1:51:11
  Right, so when an actor passed by the camera, they had to
• 1:51:14
  rotate the candle in their hand made walk so the bulbs open side
• 1:51:19
  switch from facing inward lighting their face to facing
• 1:51:22
  outward, lighting the wall. Herschfeld said that the trick
• 1:51:25
  candle was a touchy affair that required a few extra takes.
• 1:51:29
  Yeah, it would have, yeah. It looks great.
• 1:51:31
  Yeah. Halfway through the picture,
• 1:51:33
  Brooks ran into Hirschfeld in the lunch line and said, Jerry,
• 1:51:36
  I'm glad I didn't fire you 4 weeks ago.
• 1:51:38
  Hirschfeld smiled and thought to himself, Mel, you're lucky I
• 1:51:41
  didn't quit 4 weeks ago. Brilliant.
• 1:51:44
  And we're lucky he didn't as well, because John Morris, Ken
• 1:51:47
  Strick, Fayden, Dale Hennessy, Dorothy Jenkins and William
• 1:51:50
  Tuttle all deserve their place in the spotlight for bringing a
• 1:51:52
  beautiful balance and weight to this film.
• 1:51:55
  Oh, definitely. Outstanding crew were.
• 1:51:57
  Unbelievable. The end.
• 1:52:05
  With the monster on the loose, he visits a little girl and took
• 1:52:07
  her away safely into bed. A lovely call back to the 1931
• 1:52:10
  film, Yeah, before smashing his way into an old, lonely blind
• 1:52:14
  man's house for soup, wine and cigars.
• 1:52:18
  Cigars over the USD? What a moment, what a moment.
• 1:52:26
  I think there's this and putting on the Ritz that people remember
• 1:52:28
  the most about this film. I certainly do.
• 1:52:31
  Anyway, what the fuck is Gene Hackman doing in here off the
• 1:52:37
  back of the French Connection? The hardest man in Hollywood,
• 1:52:40
  and he just wants to try his hand at this.
• 1:52:42
  I always forget he's in this until he looks up.
• 1:52:46
  Even when he's looking down, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, it's Gene
• 1:52:49
  Hackman. Of course it is.
• 1:52:51
  A visitor, is all I ask. It starts so, so good.
• 1:52:55
  He's just excellent, isn't he? He's just excellent.
• 1:52:57
  And it really sets us like this is years and years and years
• 1:53:02
  before Tenenbaums. But I say so much of that
• 1:53:04
  performance in very much it's so like you said, delivery just
• 1:53:07
  sees delivery. It's always there.
• 1:53:09
  It's just the speed that he does things.
• 1:53:11
  So the monster turns up and he's like, what's your name?
• 1:53:14
  I didn't get that. That's.
• 1:53:16
  So good, That's so good. I didn't get that.
• 1:53:21
  It's just. Hackman, isn't it?
• 1:53:27
  What's your name? I didn't get that.
• 1:53:30
  It's it's fucking excellent. Why?
• 1:53:32
  Would he get it? He's right next to him.
• 1:53:36
  I didn't know you're mute. And it's like just not really.
• 1:53:39
  But he's just like trying to make everything harmonious and
• 1:53:41
  just trying to make this whole scene work when it cuts that
• 1:53:45
  wide shot. His performance on them wide is
• 1:53:47
  just absolutely 2nd and on. And how many gags can you fit
• 1:53:51
  into like 4 minutes, 3-4 minutes?
• 1:53:53
  It's just relentless. And it's just his delivery.
• 1:53:56
  So, I mean, spilling that soup, That's hilarious.
• 1:53:59
  Just carrying. Yeah.
• 1:54:04
  And it's just the next, like, some wine with your soup.
• 1:54:06
  And there's pouring the wine. Yeah.
• 1:54:08
  He's like, wait. And then it's like, well, a
• 1:54:10
  toast. And he just smashes the cup.
• 1:54:16
  And then he brings out the cigars.
• 1:54:18
  And it's like, I've saving these cigars.
• 1:54:22
  And it's that little delivery doesn't need to go that hard.
• 1:54:24
  Like I've said, it's so, so brilliant.
• 1:54:26
  I've been saving these and just these little bits of dialogue
• 1:54:29
  and like I'll show you, fires our friend and lights it boils
• 1:54:32
  got his thumb out, so he mistakes his thumb for the
• 1:54:34
  cigar. Brilliant.
• 1:54:36
  And he's just when he goes, don't inhale into the tip close.
• 1:54:38
  I love that. Just giving them advice.
• 1:54:41
  Don't inhale till the tip close. It's like, well, how do you know
• 1:54:43
  that the tips going to glory of your blind.
• 1:54:45
  Man like. All of these, the depth to this
• 1:54:48
  performance is absolutely brilliant, but lightning is
• 1:54:50
  still on fire. And like I've said about Boyle,
• 1:54:52
  like his performance here, his time in here, that the length,
• 1:54:56
  the time he waits and he does this little move that I've just
• 1:54:59
  watched it again this afternoon and it's so good.
• 1:55:01
  He's thumbs on fire and he's staring at it and he goes.
• 1:55:05
  He just enjoys it for like a split second.
• 1:55:10
  He goes and then blows it out and then just start screaming.
• 1:55:17
  It's absolutely fantastic. That's him out the door and it's
• 1:55:21
  like, come back, come back. That was going to make espresso.
• 1:55:24
  Still got this. You got wonderful performance
• 1:55:27
  from Hackman. So nuanced, so brilliant, so out
• 1:55:30
  of character. For him to come in and do this,
• 1:55:32
  what a scene this is. It's so, so funny.
• 1:55:35
  There's a nice bit of history playing out here because Peter
• 1:55:39
  Boyle was offered the role of Popeye Doyle.
• 1:55:41
  Yes, that's. Right.
• 1:55:42
  And he didn't take it because he faced A backlash from his
• 1:55:45
  performance in Jaw and he didn't want to play like this.
• 1:55:47
  Kind of like bigoted Andy. That's right, yeah.
• 1:55:50
  Gene Hackman came in, so the two of them sharing this scene is
• 1:55:53
  really special. Yeah, this was in Bride of
• 1:55:55
  Frankenstein wasn't where he visits the blind man, that's all
• 1:55:57
  that's. Right.
• 1:55:58
  Who's playing the violin? Yeah, it's like it is kind
• 1:56:00
  nearly shot for shot, the intro of it.
• 1:56:02
  But the way that this is played up is so, so brilliant.
• 1:56:05
  Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's saving Bride is
• 1:56:08
  crazy because they end up being great mates and they do end up
• 1:56:11
  smoking cigars together and talk and then.
• 1:56:14
  Yeah. So yeah, like you're saying,
• 1:56:16
  Shane Hackman, 1974 Oscar winner, three times nominated,
• 1:56:19
  top of his game. Yeah, what's he doing in this?
• 1:56:23
  It's crazy. So.
• 1:56:24
  Pleased he's in it. Well, the reason he's in is
• 1:56:26
  because of tennis, because Hackman and Wilder were
• 1:56:29
  occasional tennis partners, and Hackman heard about the film
• 1:56:32
  through their games together. He told Wilder he'd been wanting
• 1:56:34
  to try a comedy for a while and he basically begged for a part,
• 1:56:38
  and he actually said he'd play the blind hermit for free if it
• 1:56:40
  bent he got to do it. Which, of course, is exactly
• 1:56:42
  what he ended up doing. Yeah, allegedly he didn't get
• 1:56:45
  paid for it. But he isn't like I was saying
• 1:56:47
  this, the wide shot seemed to be quite well played out, but there
• 1:56:50
  seems to be a little bit something wrong with the
• 1:56:52
  close-ups. And I think that's due to there
• 1:56:53
  was some reshoots required due to make up continuity issues.
• 1:56:56
  Hackman wasn't available for those.
• 1:56:58
  So for example, the hand spill in the soup is Brooks.
• 1:57:01
  So I think there would have been a couple more of them close-ups
• 1:57:03
  where it's it's Brooks involved. Yeah, Peter Boyle wore a
• 1:57:06
  protective cup during this moment to protect his vital
• 1:57:10
  areas. Yeah, just fair enough.
• 1:57:12
  Just just. Make it cold, yeah.
• 1:57:15
  Yeah, just make it cold. Dry, I thought as I mean.
• 1:57:18
  Yeah, yeah. The the final line is just so,
• 1:57:21
  so funny. I was going to make espresso.
• 1:57:23
  Yeah, it is the bit that everyone remembers Hackman
• 1:57:25
  screaming like, where are you going before tenderly saying I
• 1:57:28
  was going to make espresso. That line was an ad Lib by
• 1:57:31
  Hackman and everyone just fell about laughing with it.
• 1:57:34
  Yeah. And the reason the scene fits to
• 1:57:37
  blacks or abruptly straight after is because Hackman could
• 1:57:40
  only deliver that line once without breaking.
• 1:57:42
  Everyone felt about laughing. No choice, but he used the first
• 1:57:45
  take. Oh, amazing.
• 1:57:47
  Even Hackman could pull it together.
• 1:57:48
  Yeah, yeah. Such a special scene, though.
• 1:57:51
  Yeah, super. And after the monster smashes
• 1:57:54
  down the blind man's door, he's left to roam the streets,
• 1:57:57
  following the lonesome sound of the violin that he loves so
• 1:57:59
  much. But it's a trap, and he's
• 1:58:01
  knocked out yet again by Frederick Inger.
• 1:58:03
  And I go, and there's a beautiful scene where the
• 1:58:06
  monster is chained open. Frederick is doing the
• 1:58:08
  honourable thing. He's going in there because love
• 1:58:11
  is the only thing that can save that creature.
• 1:58:15
  He gives explicit instructions not to open the door, even at
• 1:58:18
  the cost of his own life. But as soon as that monster
• 1:58:21
  wakes up he turns his tail and is pleading at the door
• 1:58:24
  whispering like let me out, get me the hell out of here and open
• 1:58:30
  the God damn door I'll kick a rotten heads in.
• 1:58:33
  You don't know a joke when you hear 1 SO.
• 1:58:39
  When that doesn't work, he appeals to the monsters need for
• 1:58:42
  love and he starts off so beautifully there's at least 7
• 1:58:46
  seconds of silence while he's thinking on his feet and then
• 1:58:51
  hello handsome and the cuts to pollute is that classic thing of
• 1:58:58
  looking around the room for the the handsome person that he's
• 1:59:01
  speaking. About Brilliant.
• 1:59:03
  Brilliant. You're a good looking fellow,
• 1:59:04
  you know that. And then Wilder goes on this
• 1:59:07
  outrageous speech about jealousy, The Olympian ideal and
• 1:59:12
  that the monster isn't evil. Frederick cradling his face in
• 1:59:15
  his hands, kissing his extraordinary big forehead.
• 1:59:19
  And this is the two sides of Wilder that is evident
• 1:59:22
  throughout the film. He's able to easily portray like
• 1:59:25
  this tender whisper right next to absolute wide eyed mania.
• 1:59:30
  Yeah. When he's talking about showing
• 1:59:32
  everybody that he can walk, that they're going to make the
• 1:59:34
  greatest single contribution to science since the creation of
• 1:59:37
  fire. Look at Peter Boyle's face in
• 1:59:39
  that moment. He's completely puzzled by
• 1:59:42
  what's going on. He stopped crying, and his eyes
• 1:59:44
  are just looking around, like, what the fuck?
• 1:59:49
  And it finished the scene of Wilder really, really tops out
• 1:59:52
  when he's screaming that his name is Frankenstein, not
• 1:59:56
  Frankenstein. Yeah.
• 1:59:57
  And you can see the vein in his forehead bulging.
• 2:00:00
  He's shouting so hard. Absolute conviction in that
• 2:00:03
  performance. Yeah.
• 2:00:05
  And there's another performance with conviction coming right
• 2:00:07
  after this. Isn't that right, man?
• 2:00:09
  There certainly is. I mean, this scene, this musical
• 2:00:12
  performance, like one of the incredible things about the
• 2:00:17
  scene, maybe the most, is that this is defined that song
• 2:00:20
  forever. I mean.
• 2:00:22
  This song is written by Irvin Berlin, one of the greatest ever
• 2:00:26
  songwriters. One of his signature songs, and
• 2:00:29
  you cannot do a proper straight face rendition of that song.
• 2:00:33
  Now, you can't do it because you can try, but people will just be
• 2:00:36
  expecting you to go in the middle of it or they'll do it
• 2:00:41
  and put you off. That's how good this scene is.
• 2:00:44
  And when it comes along, it's so unexpected because it is that
• 2:00:47
  cliched Frankenstein moment where Frankenstein is going to
• 2:00:50
  demonstrate how this creature is intelligent and it's not a
• 2:00:52
  monster. So how's he going to do that
• 2:00:54
  here? Oh, right, the song and dance.
• 2:00:56
  No, but is it? I mean, it just comes out of
• 2:00:58
  nowhere. Everyone in that theatre is so
• 2:01:01
  like enraptured and on edge as to what they're going to see in,
• 2:01:05
  I mean, wild in this because Frederick is so pompous and
• 2:01:08
  pretentious as ever until he says, may I now present a
• 2:01:12
  cultured, sophisticated man about town and then straight
• 2:01:16
  into it. Like then straight into it and
• 2:01:20
  the creature, I mean, it just goes from stomping on the floor
• 2:01:22
  to being surprisingly light on his feet at times and getting
• 2:01:26
  in. And I love that moment when
• 2:01:28
  Frederick just chucks him under the chin because he's so proud
• 2:01:31
  of him, like. You.
• 2:01:33
  I love him. And it's all going so well in
• 2:01:39
  the audience loving until that bull breaks and the creature
• 2:01:42
  starts freaking out. But like, how quickly does that
• 2:01:44
  audience turn on him though? Oh, we're not having it now.
• 2:01:47
  We'll love new. Like 10 seconds ago.
• 2:01:49
  And where did we get the cabbages from?
• 2:01:52
  Like just don't bring the cabbages.
• 2:01:54
  In case of crap, yeah, just. Stage dive into the audience.
• 2:02:00
  It's where Wilder just keeps going.
• 2:02:02
  Yeah, yeah, with the cane. Maybe look stupid.
• 2:02:09
  Maybe look like a fool. Yeah, I mean, in terms of
• 2:02:12
  comedy, it's as iconic as it gets and for good.
• 2:02:14
  Reason superb. Oh, it's amazing.
• 2:02:18
  Yeah. But unbelievably, Brooks didn't
• 2:02:20
  want to put this sequence in the film.
• 2:02:22
  It's crazy. Wilder wrote it into the script
• 2:02:24
  really early. Brooks read it, and he was
• 2:02:27
  absolutely horrified. He thought it was just far too
• 2:02:29
  silly. I mean, this is Mel Brooks
• 2:02:30
  saying this is far too silly. Yeah, his pitch back to Wilder
• 2:02:33
  was this, but saluting. Mary Shelley was saluting.
• 2:02:36
  James Whale was saluting Universal Pictures, sweating
• 2:02:39
  stones, castles, lightning laboratories.
• 2:02:42
  If we have the monster sing and dance, it'll just become silly
• 2:02:45
  and tear the whole tone of the pitcher in half.
• 2:02:48
  I can understand where he's coming.
• 2:02:49
  From on the page it would have seen that way.
• 2:02:50
  Definitely. But Wilder understandably fought
• 2:02:53
  him really hard on it. According to him, he argued for
• 2:02:56
  about 20 minutes until he was red in the face.
• 2:02:58
  And then suddenly Brooks just said, OK, it's in.
• 2:03:01
  And Wilder said, why did you put me through that?
• 2:03:03
  And Brooks, his reply was because I wasn't sure if he was
• 2:03:05
  right or not. But I knew if you didn't fight
• 2:03:07
  for it, it'd be wrong. And if you really argued, I knew
• 2:03:10
  it was right. And Brooks has actually told
• 2:03:13
  that story slightly differently. In his version, he made a deal
• 2:03:16
  with Wilder. We'll shoot it, but when you see
• 2:03:18
  it cut together with the rest of the film and the dailies, you'll
• 2:03:21
  want to cut it yourself. So they shot it.
• 2:03:24
  And of course, when Brooks watched the dailies, he
• 2:03:26
  immediately knew it was the best scene in the entire film.
• 2:03:29
  He said he later apologized profusely the Wilder on opening
• 2:03:32
  night. Yeah, great.
• 2:03:35
  When filming the scene, they had no idea what the monster was
• 2:03:37
  going to do for the actual lyrics.
• 2:03:38
  Bowl had to make a decision in the moment.
• 2:03:41
  Yeah. And what came out of his mouth
• 2:03:42
  was that that's so funny. It never feels to get a laugh
• 2:03:49
  from me that a confident man about town.
• 2:03:53
  And that's his singing voice. And knowing how funny the scene
• 2:03:58
  was, Brooks reportedly warned the extras that anyone who'd
• 2:04:02
  broken a laughter would be arrested.
• 2:04:04
  Arrested. Not fire arrested.
• 2:04:09
  So instead of presenting A cultured, sophisticated man
• 2:04:12
  about town, Frederick's experiment is in tatters and the
• 2:04:15
  monster is captive yet again. Yet again.
• 2:04:21
  The final stretch of the film sees Frederick's financier
• 2:04:25
  financier Elizabeth show up unannounced before being taken
• 2:04:29
  by the monster who has escaped yet again.
• 2:04:32
  And we're riding the terrain right to the end as Frankenstein
• 2:04:35
  and his monster trade certain assets.
• 2:04:37
  Shall we say yes? Over to you first man.
• 2:04:40
  Yeah, I mean, I said in the writing, I think there's moments
• 2:04:44
  in this film that are definitely more Mel Brooks than Gene
• 2:04:46
  Wilder, and this is 100% one of them.
• 2:04:50
  The creature's got Elizabeth. It's maintenance move on her so
• 2:04:53
  I can really medicine. She's initially terrified, as
• 2:04:55
  she would be, until she realizes what he's packing.
• 2:04:59
  And it's like, yes, Mel, I get it, he's got an enormous French
• 2:05:03
  Tucker. Yes, that's the level you're
• 2:05:05
  going for. That tends to be his level a lot
• 2:05:07
  of the time. And it's moment, I'll be honest,
• 2:05:09
  it doesn't really land for me all that well compared to
• 2:05:11
  everything else, which is really clever.
• 2:05:13
  What rescues it though is again just how good Madeline Khan is.
• 2:05:17
  I mean she can make any scene funny, like when that violin
• 2:05:20
  strikes up in the distance and having the post coital
• 2:05:22
  cigarettes and he goes off towards it like her reaction.
• 2:05:26
  You men are all alike, 7 or 8 quick ones, you know, with the
• 2:05:29
  boys to boss to brag. You better keep your mouth shut.
• 2:05:32
  Oh, I think I love him. Just.
• 2:05:35
  Tawdi rescues this scene for me. She does.
• 2:05:38
  Yeah. Yeah, she was a trained singer
• 2:05:40
  with a great ear for music and probably have a room to make
• 2:05:43
  some of her own choices on the musical moment.
• 2:05:45
  The big song, the song a character sings after an
• 2:05:48
  encounter with the monster or during the Incarnate of the
• 2:05:50
  Morrison, was originally going to be cheek to cheek.
• 2:05:56
  It was. Khan pushed for Our Sweet
• 2:05:58
  Mystery of Life instead, specifically because she wanted
• 2:06:01
  a song that opened with an AH sound.
• 2:06:04
  Right, which makes it funny. It does.
• 2:06:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after this, into the
• 2:06:11
  moment where the monster is lured back to the castle,
• 2:06:15
  knocked out clean again, chained up again, but this time with the
• 2:06:19
  plan to equalize the imbalance in his cerebral spinal fluid.
• 2:06:24
  And he'll be as right as rain. Another scene which looks
• 2:06:27
  incredibly authentic. Ken Strick Faden's gizmos and
• 2:06:29
  gadgets doing backflips and electricity bouncing around them
• 2:06:32
  with Angle furiously flicking switches and turning knobs.
• 2:06:35
  It may be a little confusing what's actually happening here
• 2:06:37
  on 1st Watch, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Watch, but it looks incredible.
• 2:06:42
  Yeah, and it's great to see Inspector Kemp for one more
• 2:06:45
  scene, bursting through the door with some angry villages using
• 2:06:49
  his wooden arm as a battery around and ruining the equipment
• 2:06:57
  put the monster stuffs into their tracks with.
• 2:07:01
  Who are you? I am the monster.
• 2:07:02
  Yes, yes, I can see you are the monster.
• 2:07:07
  But he's got this really articulate speech about love and
• 2:07:09
  loneliness and his creator. And with that, Kemp's former
• 2:07:13
  sharpness is completely blundered.
• 2:07:15
  This has been his task. This is his job.
• 2:07:18
  And as soon as the monster starts talking, all of that's
• 2:07:21
  forgotten. Immediately.
• 2:07:24
  He offers his hand in friendship and it's an obvious gag, but
• 2:07:28
  it's a really hilarious moment when the monster pulls it off
• 2:07:30
  and that popping the sound effect.
• 2:07:33
  Oh shit, to the lumber yard. During the transference scene,
• 2:07:41
  the monster becomes an articulate thinker.
• 2:07:44
  This was more in line with Mary Shelley's original novel than
• 2:07:46
  the Universal films. In the book, the monster is
• 2:07:49
  articulate and can read and write.
• 2:07:51
  Yeah, I think he also asks Frankenstein to make him a mate
• 2:07:54
  as well. Yeah, which is where the the
• 2:07:57
  premise for Bride of Frankenstein comes from.
• 2:07:59
  Yeah, so that's pretty much it. And we're at the end of the film
• 2:08:02
  and we have, you know, the monster becomes an articulate
• 2:08:05
  thinker. So what Frederick going to
• 2:08:09
  become? We shall see.
• 2:08:10
  What could he possibly have got from the monster?
• 2:08:12
  I wonder, and I wonder if this is Mel Brooks input because what
• 2:08:16
  a strange way to end the film. But it is great.
• 2:08:18
  It's just very strange that the lady said, we've had all of
• 2:08:22
  these really wonderful moments. And I feel like Wilde has got to
• 2:08:25
  the point now where he's like, you know, what I've said, what
• 2:08:28
  I've wanted to say, I've pulled this off, let Mel have the last
• 2:08:31
  three minutes of the film or whatever else.
• 2:08:33
  It all feels a little bit tacked on, you know, keep the hat on
• 2:08:37
  type of thing. It's just we've lost all of this
• 2:08:40
  intelligence that we've built up all the way through the film.
• 2:08:42
  It just seems to be like, oh, we'll just tape this on the end
• 2:08:45
  of it then, you know, and that push in right at the end of the
• 2:08:48
  eyes just seems a little bit last minute.
• 2:08:50
  That doesn't seem planned at all, it seems.
• 2:08:52
  Does feel a little less. I think it's quite unsettling.
• 2:08:55
  I think it's probably the most scary moment in the film.
• 2:08:57
  Yeah, you're right. It feels sloppy.
• 2:09:00
  It feels really sloppy considering what we've been
• 2:09:02
  through and how we thought through and how precise
• 2:09:05
  everything has been up until that moment.
• 2:09:07
  I do love that cut. Do I go sitting on the roof
• 2:09:09
  playing that massive horn thing? That's really funny.
• 2:09:11
  That's brilliant. I would just like to have end on
• 2:09:14
  that. Like you could imply that
• 2:09:16
  without them getting into bed and then, you know, that just
• 2:09:18
  goes a little bit too far for me.
• 2:09:20
  But cut to the fire. Her singing, wonderful.
• 2:09:23
  That's great. You know, it's, it does work on
• 2:09:26
  on certain levels, but it's not the level that we've been used
• 2:09:30
  to. Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 2:09:32
  I'm not wild about this at all. They've left the back door open
• 2:09:35
  I think a little bit and it's just the breeze has got in and
• 2:09:37
  it's, it's not, it's not as comfortable as I have been
• 2:09:40
  throughout the whole film. It is fine, but it feels like
• 2:09:44
  something I could have written and I didn't want to feel like
• 2:09:47
  that. Yeah, yeah, I know what you
• 2:09:49
  mean. And Madeline Khan's Elizabeth in
• 2:09:51
  the final reveal in a wedding nightgown with a vertical white
• 2:09:55
  St. towering beehive wig, is a homage to Elta Lanchester's
• 2:09:59
  bride Frankenstein. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:10:01
  Yeah. And I think that her performance
• 2:10:04
  goes rescuer, to be honest, because she's.
• 2:10:06
  Going to slip us off yeah, it's all good.
• 2:10:11
  That was really funny I would have preferred to just end on
• 2:10:14
  that, to be honest. I.
• 2:10:15
  Would Yeah. So Frederick and Inga are
• 2:10:17
  together at last. The Monster and Elizabeth are
• 2:10:19
  together, but for how long? Considering his lack of
• 2:10:22
  equipment, we don't know. A satisfying, weird, rappable
• 2:10:25
  classic comedy. It's a weird end of.
• 2:10:28
  It's a weird. End of Yeah.
• 2:10:30
  Yeah, satisfying for Inga. Yes, she's very satisfied.
• 2:10:33
  Yes, clearly somebody satisfied. Yeah, reception and awards.
• 2:10:41
  The first cut of Young Frankenstein was a fairly
• 2:10:43
  serious problem. Brooks screened a rough cut on
• 2:10:46
  the Fox lot that ran over 2 hours and 20 minutes.
• 2:10:49
  The audience were restless, the laps were patchy, and Brooks
• 2:10:51
  knew he had a lot of work to do. And Brooks closed that showing
• 2:10:55
  by saying, ladies and gentlemen, you've just seen a two hour and
• 2:10:59
  20 minute failure in less than three weeks or you're back here
• 2:11:02
  to see a 95 minute smash It movie.
• 2:11:05
  And then he locked himself in the cutting room with this
• 2:11:07
  editor, John Howard. Wow.
• 2:11:08
  What Brooks realized in there was that the film actually had
• 2:11:11
  too much comedy in it, joke after joke after joke with no
• 2:11:14
  breathing room. So he started cutting you,
• 2:11:17
  removed the weaker jokes and spaced out the moments where he
• 2:11:20
  wanted the audience to relax. He said it was about getting the
• 2:11:23
  rhythm of the movie right. Absolutely.
• 2:11:25
  Yeah. For the best.
• 2:11:26
  Yeah, definitely. He didn't do all the editing
• 2:11:28
  work in a single month of the Fox lot.
• 2:11:30
  He took the rough cut to multiple cities, ran four or
• 2:11:33
  five different test screenings, took notes after each one.
• 2:11:36
  So the process was edit screen, edit screen, edit screen, edit
• 2:11:38
  screen until he tightened the write up.
• 2:11:40
  Right. Good.
• 2:11:41
  Yeah. Young Frankenstein was made for
• 2:11:42
  2.78 million. It opened in mid-december 1974,
• 2:11:47
  in the same week as The Tower, Inferno and The Godfather Part
• 2:11:50
  2, and it cleaned up. The final domestic gross was
• 2:11:53
  86.2 million. Really, really good.
• 2:11:58
  Massive. And this made 1974 a unique year
• 2:12:01
  for Mel Brooks and for Hollywood in general.
• 2:12:03
  Blazing Saddles came out in February, Young Frankenstein
• 2:12:06
  came out in December. So within a single calendar
• 2:12:09
  year, he had two films finished in the top five with the US box
• 2:12:12
  office, Blazing Saddles at #1 with $119.6 million and Young
• 2:12:18
  Frankenstein and #4 with, as we've said, $86.2 million.
• 2:12:22
  Wow, hot property Brooks. Yeah.
• 2:12:25
  Yeah, hot property. This is the first, and today the
• 2:12:28
  last time that a director has had two films in the top five
• 2:12:31
  box office hits in the same year.
• 2:12:32
  Wow. Oh really?
• 2:12:33
  Wow. That's impressive.
• 2:12:34
  Can't see that huge done again, no.
• 2:12:37
  Surely not, no. I was stunned when I read that.
• 2:12:39
  I mean, that is a real record breaker.
• 2:12:42
  Yeah, it really is. Yeah.
• 2:12:43
  Spiegelberg doing Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the same
• 2:12:46
  year. Yeah, it is.
• 2:12:47
  Yeah. I mean, that is the greatest
• 2:12:49
  achievement ever as far as I'm concerned in.
• 2:12:51
  Yeah, Yeah. But Schindler's List, I came, I
• 2:12:53
  think it got pipped by Mrs. Doubtfire, so it wasn't in the
• 2:12:56
  top five. Yeah, wow.
• 2:12:58
  Amazing. The film was very well received
• 2:13:01
  critically and that right Matt. It was Pauline Kael, in her
• 2:13:05
  review, said the movie works because it has the Mary Shelley
• 2:13:08
  story to lean on. We know that the monster will be
• 2:13:11
  created and will get loose, and Brooks makes a leap up as a
• 2:13:14
  director because although the comedy doesn't build, he carries
• 2:13:17
  the story through. Absolutely agreed, Pauline.
• 2:13:20
  Yeah, definitely. And Vincent can be right in the
• 2:13:23
  New York Times, said Mel Brooks. Funniest, most cohesive comedy
• 2:13:26
  to date. It will be misleading to
• 2:13:28
  describe Young Frankenstein is astoundingly witty, but it's a
• 2:13:31
  great deal of lowbrow fun of the sort that Mister Brooks
• 2:13:34
  specialises in. He certainly does that.
• 2:13:36
  Yeah. And finally, our man in the
• 2:13:39
  fields, Roger Ebert. What do you think he gave Young
• 2:13:42
  Frankenstein out of four chaps? 4 Let's say he loved it. 3 1/2.
• 2:13:47
  3 1/2 Matt out of the park. Oh, love it. 4 out of four.
• 2:13:52
  Just like that, Ebert said. Mel Brooks is at home with Young
• 2:13:55
  Frankenstein, his most disciplined and visually
• 2:13:58
  invented film. It also happens to be very
• 2:14:00
  funny. Yes, parody films and comedies
• 2:14:02
  don't generally fare well at the Academy Awards, but you know
• 2:14:05
  Frankenstein punched above its weight.
• 2:14:07
  It received 2O nominations. Best adapted screenplay for
• 2:14:10
  Brooks and Wilder and Best Sound.
• 2:14:12
  Right. Great production design.
• 2:14:14
  Nothing costume design, nothing cinematography.
• 2:14:17
  Photography, yeah. Yeah.
• 2:14:19
  And it did pick up nominations at the 1975 Golden Globes.
• 2:14:23
  Clovis Leachman was nominated for Best Actress in Musical or
• 2:14:26
  Comedy for Foul Blue, Her and Madeline Khan nominated for Best
• 2:14:30
  Supporting Actress. Sadly, neither one.
• 2:14:33
  Slightly odd thing about that is those nominations that can
• 2:14:35
  actually has more screen time than Leachman.
• 2:14:38
  Leachman is not lead, really, is she?
• 2:14:40
  No, not at all. Not at all.
• 2:14:42
  In 2000, the American Film Institute ranked Young
• 2:14:44
  Frankenstein #13 on the list of 100 Funniest American Films of
• 2:14:48
  All Time, and in 2003 the film was inducted at the Library of
• 2:14:52
  Congress National Film Registry. Amazing.
• 2:14:54
  Yeah, so all that still impressing people.
• 2:14:58
  And now it has 95% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 92% from
• 2:15:02
  audiences, and eight out of 10 on IMDb.
• 2:15:04
  It's a high score. For big numbers.
• 2:15:07
  So I don't think any of us are surprised that it didn't sweep
• 2:15:09
  the Oscars. But with a decent bit of Academy
• 2:15:11
  recognition, positive reviews, and being a box office
• 2:15:13
  blockbuster, Young Frankenstein was a success on all fronts.
• 2:15:17
  Yes, sequels and influence. No sequels to Young
• 2:15:25
  Frankenstein, but following the success of his Broadway
• 2:15:27
  adaptation of The Producers, Brooks adapted Young
• 2:15:30
  Frankenstein for the stage in 2007.
• 2:15:32
  It wasn't the cultural juggernaut that The Producers
• 2:15:34
  turned out to be, but it had a respectable run and picked up 3
• 2:15:37
  Tony nominations as well. Yeah, but in the years since its
• 2:15:40
  release, where have you seen Young Frankenstein's influence?
• 2:15:43
  What do you think its legacy is? The movie that is not the stage
• 2:15:46
  show, of course. Yes.
• 2:15:47
  Of course, a short conversation that wouldn't.
• 2:15:51
  I don't know, I. Don't know.
• 2:15:54
  Matt, your thoughts? I mean, there's just so many
• 2:15:57
  iconic moments in this that have become its legacy.
• 2:15:59
  The blind hermit scene, putting on the ribs, obviously.
• 2:16:02
  I mean, that turned up in The Bride, the Maggie Gyllenhaal
• 2:16:05
  film from earlier this year, really referencing that.
• 2:16:08
  And I think it's one that really established Mel Books as the
• 2:16:11
  modern day master of this. Boo for me.
• 2:16:13
  Blazing Saddles is part of that as well, of course, but
• 2:16:16
  everything follows on from this. You don't have this.
• 2:16:19
  You don't have airplane, You don't have airplane, you don't
• 2:16:21
  have the Naked Gun, you know, And I think that's probably its
• 2:16:24
  biggest legacy. This is how you do a spoof.
• 2:16:26
  And I think also one that really struck me just the last time I
• 2:16:29
  watched it, that scene, the charade scene, like the bit
• 2:16:32
  after that when he sits, I got down to talk to him.
• 2:16:35
  I will not be angry. That really struck me as, like,
• 2:16:39
  Basil Faulty and Manuel, really lazy man.
• 2:16:43
  Well, for smacking him over the head.
• 2:16:45
  Yeah. Yeah, that's a really.
• 2:16:46
  Good call. That's good call, yeah.
• 2:16:48
  Yeah, and there's another link from Pythons to Melrose, Mel
• 2:16:52
  Brooks to Pythons. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:16:55
  I mean, I can see some massive influence since, and I think the
• 2:16:59
  likes of The Rocky Horror Picture Show that came out 75 as
• 2:17:03
  real elements of this, especially the musical numbers
• 2:17:05
  put into it. Steve Martin got a hold of this.
• 2:17:07
  You've got like the Man with two brains that came out in 1983.
• 2:17:11
  I think it's. Very much influenced by this.
• 2:17:13
  And I see lots of this in Beetlejuice.
• 2:17:16
  I see right through it. It's very, very similar in that
• 2:17:20
  kind of respect. And then we had science,
• 2:17:22
  obviously a massively favorite. I mean, Mel Brooks made this
• 2:17:26
  work. He went back in and he recutted
• 2:17:28
  and he made it work. But the start of this, they
• 2:17:30
  wanted to make something because they loved it.
• 2:17:33
  That's the message. Yeah, really.
• 2:17:35
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 2:17:36
  I think the legacy, the film is huge and I think it works on a
• 2:17:39
  few levels. I think the it's the gold
• 2:17:41
  standard for genre parody. It's it's in the conversation of
• 2:17:44
  one of the greatest anyone making a comedy that
• 2:17:46
  affectionately sends up a specific style of film making.
• 2:17:49
  They're all working from this blueprint.
• 2:17:51
  Yeah. The trick of playing it
• 2:17:52
  completely straight, treating the genre with reverence,
• 2:17:55
  letting the comedy grow out of the seriousness rather than
• 2:17:57
  fighting against it. That lesson is everybody's been
• 2:18:00
  studying ever since. Yeah.
• 2:18:02
  It also give us Gene Wilder, the director a year later.
• 2:18:05
  Like we said, he did the adventures that Sherlock Holmes,
• 2:18:07
  the Smarter brother featured Marty Feldman and Madeleine
• 2:18:10
  Khan. Basically the Young Frankenstein
• 2:18:12
  gang reassembled. He went on to direct The World's
• 2:18:15
  Greatest Love, then Haunted Honeymoon.
• 2:18:17
  Similar kind of thing in 86, again with Feldman.
• 2:18:20
  Mixed results on that one. None of them really hit the
• 2:18:22
  heights of Young Frankenstein, but you can absolutely trace
• 2:18:24
  Wilders direct and career back to what he learned watching
• 2:18:27
  Brooks on this set. Yes and also I really believe
• 2:18:30
  this is not tongue in cheek. I think it's one of the great
• 2:18:33
  cinematic adaptations of the Frankenstein story.
• 2:18:37
  Yeah, yeah. I don't see why not.
• 2:18:38
  Yeah. Yeah, I don't disagree with that
• 2:18:40
  at all. Yeah.
• 2:18:40
  It's in the conversation of the 19311 and Brad of Frankenstein.
• 2:18:44
  They put this in there with them too.
• 2:18:46
  I don't think any, but anything else since comes close.
• 2:18:49
  No. Fair enough.
• 2:18:50
  No. So a legacy is strong now as
• 2:18:52
  it's ever been. Young Frankenstein will always
• 2:18:54
  be in the conversation of best comedy ever made.
• 2:18:57
  Yeah. It's up there, yeah.
• 2:19:01
  All the right movies ranking. Finally, it's time to rate Young
• 2:19:06
  Frankenstein and score it out of 10.
• 2:19:08
  And I'm starting off here. It was my choice.
• 2:19:10
  I'm going to go Here comes. I was always excited to return
• 2:19:13
  back to this one, and I'm so pleased that we did.
• 2:19:16
  It's a film with a great production story with such
• 2:19:18
  reverence for what came before it, and it's often overlooked
• 2:19:21
  for the talent working behind the camera to really make the
• 2:19:24
  film what it is. It's full of some of the best
• 2:19:27
  comedy that Hollywood's ever produced.
• 2:19:29
  It's got one of the best comedy casts ever assembled.
• 2:19:32
  I'd argue it is the greatest comedy cast ever assembled.
• 2:19:36
  It's got one of the greatest comic performances ever in Gene
• 2:19:38
  Wilder, and it's Mel Brooks's best film.
• 2:19:41
  I mean, these things are stacking up here.
• 2:19:45
  I do have a few nickels. There are a couple of gags that
• 2:19:47
  don't land for me. There are a few too many nodes
• 2:19:49
  to the camera. I'm also not wholly satisfied
• 2:19:52
  with the notion that the monster get away with the sexual attack
• 2:19:54
  because he's packing a lot of heat in the power zone.
• 2:19:57
  That leaves a bad taste. Fair enough.
• 2:20:00
  So it's not a perfect 10, but it's very close. 9.5 out of 10
• 2:20:04
  for me. Nice.
• 2:20:05
  Just for what it represents, what it is, it's legacy.
• 2:20:08
  Yeah. Incredible.
• 2:20:09
  Yeah. Wesley, what about you?
• 2:20:11
  I mean, I'm very, very similar. There's just so much of this
• 2:20:14
  film that I absolutely adore. I just think it's just a
• 2:20:16
  wonderful achievement from two of the greats of of the time.
• 2:20:20
  And even now I think it really is the special film it really is
• 2:20:24
  want to watch and I can watch it with, you know, me kids and they
• 2:20:27
  love it. I love it and at all ages can
• 2:20:30
  get away with this. But like you look, I do have
• 2:20:32
  some issues to, you know, the the last kind of 20 minutes of
• 2:20:35
  the film does seem to tend to lose a little bit of pace and it
• 2:20:38
  does kind of seem to lose its way and unravel slightly towards
• 2:20:41
  that. And, you know, I kind of get
• 2:20:44
  lost with that. And I get to that moment
• 2:20:45
  especially like, you know, when after we get that really
• 2:20:48
  eloquent speech from Peter Boyle, when to get that eloquent
• 2:20:50
  sweet speech from the monster, I just feel like I want to hit
• 2:20:53
  rewind and go back to the start and watch it again.
• 2:20:54
  Yes, that point. And for that reason, it's not
• 2:20:58
  going to be a perfect 10 for me either.
• 2:20:59
  But it is also very close. It's it's up there.
• 2:21:02
  It's a nine for me. It's a wonderful, wonderful
• 2:21:04
  film. Yeah, absolutely is.
• 2:21:07
  Yeah, great score, Max. What about you?
• 2:21:09
  All singing from the same hymn sheet here.
• 2:21:11
  Really. I've always had a real love for
• 2:21:12
  this. It absolutely tickles my funny
• 2:21:14
  bone. It takes a very specific genre
• 2:21:17
  of horror that I love and it gets so much humour out of it.
• 2:21:19
  But at the same time it's not taking the piss out of it
• 2:21:22
  because if that's all I was doing, I just don't think I
• 2:21:24
  would like this at all. But the way it looks, the
• 2:21:29
  production design, they are all on point and there's real
• 2:21:32
  tightness to the story and the performances.
• 2:21:35
  I simply don't get in any of the Mel Brooks film.
• 2:21:37
  It's definitely his best film and Gene Wilder needs so much
• 2:21:40
  credit for what he does on screen and what he does on the
• 2:21:42
  page as well. But it is the same issue that
• 2:21:45
  you guys have. We've just talked about it.
• 2:21:47
  By the end, the jokes stopped landing.
• 2:21:50
  They were a bit cringy, they were a bit off.
• 2:21:52
  And I think what it comes down to is I don't think Mel Brooks
• 2:21:54
  really knows how to end the film.
• 2:21:57
  Plays and saddles just. Certainly doesn't with saddles.
• 2:22:00
  Well, no. Breaks of 4th wall collapses
• 2:22:02
  into nonsense in this one, ends with a Dick joke because what he
• 2:22:07
  thinks is funny and it's just a little bit of a let down
• 2:22:10
  considering how good the rest of it is.
• 2:22:11
  So for me it is the only issue that sticks out.
• 2:22:14
  So this one brings it out just a little bit to a 9.5. 9.5 as
• 2:22:19
  well. Wow, very, very close in all
• 2:22:22
  three scores there. Yeah.
• 2:22:24
  Yeah. Our 4th and final score comes
• 2:22:25
  from our trusted Patreon community.
• 2:22:27
  Some mini reviews to start us off with.
• 2:22:29
  First comes from Matt Walters. Matt says has to be a 10 for the
• 2:22:34
  songs. The Thumb on fire.
• 2:22:36
  Put the candle back and let's face it, even the role in the
• 2:22:39
  hair joke works. Homage and parody its finest.
• 2:22:42
  And Gene Wilder's hair is extraordinary.
• 2:22:44
  Yes, it is on permanent rotation in my house when I was a kid and
• 2:22:47
  I still know all the words. Yeah.
• 2:22:49
  Nice grouping. Yes, very nice match.
• 2:22:53
  Very nice. We have to mention Hackman as
• 2:22:54
  well. It's all in the jeans, isn't?
• 2:22:59
  It Next up Steve says I saw Young Frankenstein and Blazing
• 2:23:03
  Saddles in the theatre on their release in 74.
• 2:23:05
  Yes I'm that old. Both great films but Young
• 2:23:08
  Frankenstein with Leachman Feldman and got adding the extra
• 2:23:11
  touches put it in my favorite comedy of all time.
• 2:23:14
  What knockers nice. Thank you Steve.
• 2:23:17
  Thank you, Steve. Thanks Steve.
• 2:23:20
  It's a nice piece this. Is a nice piece.
• 2:23:27
  This is a nice piece and our third review comes from Shazza
• 2:23:31
  and Shazza says I think this is Shazza's favorite film of all
• 2:23:34
  time. She says 10 times the length of
• 2:23:36
  Westies lists when answering Patreon questions.
• 2:23:39
  My all time #1 fave and most watched film Blow her.
• 2:23:45
  They are called the films. Great excellent great excellent
• 2:23:49
  scores. Three 10s on the spin so woof. 3
• 2:23:53
  full marks from the period Imperial community and overall.
• 2:23:57
  80 RM Peter and Scoffy and Frankenstein was What do you
• 2:24:01
  think, fellas? Could it be a 10 from there
• 2:24:03
  could. Be high could be an app.
• 2:24:05
  I'm going to say A9. I'll stick to 10.
• 2:24:08
  I'll take a punt on it. Matt, what knockers it is 10.
• 2:24:13
  Oh, wow. Yeah, 10, a perfect 10 for your
• 2:24:16
  Frankenstein. Amazing, amazing.
• 2:24:18
  Everybody has got so much affection for this film,
• 2:24:21
  considering the comments. Yeah.
• 2:24:23
  And with all scores combined, that gives Young Frankenstein.
• 2:24:26
  Hey, whopping 38 out of 40. Wow.
• 2:24:30
  Can you believe it? Yeah, it's a big one.
• 2:24:32
  Brilliant stuff. Didn't expect that, no.
• 2:24:36
  Wow. And that is US done with Young
• 2:24:38
  Frankenstein. But we will be back in two
• 2:24:40
  weeks. Next on the show, it's John
• 2:24:42
  Westie and Matt's. They'll be talking about Alfred
• 2:24:44
  Hitchcock's absolute classic Stonewall Cycle.
• 2:24:48
  Yeah, lovely. There we go for that one.
• 2:24:50
  Wow. Yeah, get your shower curtains
• 2:24:52
  drawn in your motels booked. Yeah, that'll be brilliant.
• 2:24:55
  Yeah. Before that though, our studio
• 2:24:57
  head and directors chair parents can hear the three fellas next
• 2:25:00
  week on Double Feature, where we're shining the light on the
• 2:25:02
  brilliant work of cinematographer Greg Fraser,
• 2:25:05
  specifically his work on June and The Batman, two huge modern
• 2:25:09
  visual achievements. 1 episode 3.
• 2:25:12
  Great guys, bound to be brilliant.
• 2:25:14
  Well, we'll see. That would be fantastic if I can
• 2:25:18
  shut up for 5 minutes. I don't think I'll be honest,
• 2:25:21
  I'll just send a. Couple of notes you'll be there
• 2:25:23
  in. Spirit.
• 2:25:23
  I'll be there in spirit. Body.
• 2:25:25
  Yeah, feet up. I'll be banging around about
• 2:25:27
  that one for a while. That's fine.
• 2:25:29
  And Speaking of which, if you want to hear that double feature
• 2:25:30
  episode, head to patreon.com/all the Right Movies and join the
• 2:25:33
  Patron community. You'll get the full back outlog
• 2:25:36
  of this show beyond the most recent 20 episodes, plus the
• 2:25:39
  watch list for new releases and double feature for the films
• 2:25:42
  we're not quite ready to bring on the main show yet.
• 2:25:45
  However, Just Young Frankenstein was a former winner of that
• 2:25:48
  show. Indeed, the format works.
• 2:25:51
  It does there are over 200 episodes across all of our
• 2:25:54
  formats, 2 brand new shows every month, so well worth your time
• 2:25:58
  and money. Yes, definitely.
• 2:26:00
  And before we go a very exciting announcement.
• 2:26:02
  We do have a book coming out in September that is all the right
• 2:26:06
  movies, the stories and secrets behind the making of 25 iconic
• 2:26:09
  films. It's, it's finally available for
• 2:26:11
  pre-order and you can find that on Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
• 2:26:15
  Waterstones, Indigo, independent book shops, books-a-million,
• 2:26:19
  bookshop.org and wherever you buy your books.
• 2:26:22
  As I said, due at the start of September.
• 2:26:24
  So get your pre-order in now and avoid any pre Christmas
• 2:26:27
  disappointment I'm sure. Yeah, definitely, yeah.
• 2:26:30
  Banger. Incredibly proud of that one.
• 2:26:31
  Yes, wonderful, wonderful stuff. 25 absolute classic films as
• 2:26:35
  well. Yeah, bangers.
• 2:26:36
  Yeah. And also, if you do like the
• 2:26:39
  podcast and you've heard us talking about this before, but
• 2:26:41
  if you could leave us a review five stars on whatever podcast
• 2:26:45
  platform that you listen to us, that would be much appreciated.
• 2:26:48
  Absolutely. I mean, if you've listened this
• 2:26:50
  far, it must be 5 stars it. Must be and this this episode 5
• 2:26:54
  stars. Yeah, of course, of course.
• 2:26:55
  Come on. You can also find us across all
• 2:26:58
  the usual social media platforms.
• 2:27:00
  Tell us what you made of Young Frankenstein, your favorite gag,
• 2:27:02
  your favorite Brooks film, or just tell us what knockers in
• 2:27:04
  the timeline and tackle us in. Why not we?
• 2:27:06
  Always love that from you. Absolutely, yeah.
• 2:27:09
  And as ever, we're on social media around the clock.
• 2:27:11
  We're on X, Blue Sky Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Our making of
• 2:27:14
  movie threads go up on X and Blue Sky researched much like
• 2:27:17
  our podcasts, absolutely thoroughly deep dives with an
• 2:27:21
  inch of their lives, with all the information coming from at
• 2:27:23
  least three sources or from the mouths of the cast and crew.
• 2:27:26
  Exactly. So don't forget to check them
• 2:27:28
  and everything we do is on all the right movies.com.
• 2:27:30
  Sure is. And that just about wraps us up
• 2:27:33
  on Young Frankenstein. We're off to put the candle
• 2:27:35
  back. We don't need a hand.
• 2:27:38
  Have one. Have one already, we've had a
• 2:27:42
  nice quiet. Thanks so much.
• 2:27:50
  Thanks guys. We'll see you.
• 2:27:50
  For Psycho in two weeks. Oh.
• 2:27:52
  Yeah, we'll all go a little margin page.
• 2:27:54
  To the lumby yard. To the lumby yard.
• 2:28:16
  Need a hand? No thanks, Have one.