Young Frankenstein: Fronk-En-Steen

Young Frankenstein is to classic horror movies what Blazing Saddles is to westerns. It is also one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. The movie works for the same reason that the works of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright work; Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder obviously know the source material backwards and forwards. But the source material goes beyond the Frankenstein movies because various methods and cliches of classic movies are used for humorous effect. The laboratory set was meticulously recreated for the film to make it a kind of sequel to what has come before. And trust me, I've seen Bride of Frankenstein, and based on the way James Whale and co. retconned the ending of the original, Young Frankenstein could certainly exist in that same fictional world.

The story follows Dr. Frankenstein's grandson Frederick Frankenstein (he pronounces it "Fronk-en-steen" due to his shame from being related to a crackpot), who is a successful neurologist in America. When Frederick's last remaining ancestor dies, he goes to Transylvania to settle his estate, only to learn that he has inherited his grandfather's castle, library, and science notes. He also "inherits" the descendant of his grandfather's assistant Igor, whose name is also Igor (but pronounced Eye-gor). Frankenstein also starts a working relationship with Inga, who becomes his new lab assistant (the two also have some sexual tension, which is bad for Frederick, because he is engaged to an uptight society woman). When Frederick discovers his grandfather's lab, complete with a book called "How I Did It", he decides that he can pick up where his grandfather left off and successfully reanimate dead tissue. But a mishap at the "brain depository" results in Frederick placing an abnormal (Abbie Normal) brain in his enormous creature.

From there, hijinks ensue. The monster escapes and causes trouble in the Transylvanian countryside. These scenes involve bizarre reactions from the villagers and the monster alike; the monster is childlike and doesn't understand his own size or strength, while each villager has a different reaction to the monster (the best has to be the Blind Man, played by Gene Hackman, in a parody of a similar scene in Bride of Frankenstein). There is also plenty of Mel Brooks-style humor, including bizarre double entendres, 4th wall breaking, and the inability of characters to realize the obvious (Igor doesn't realize that he has a hump, let alone a hump that constantly shifts from side to side).

Brooks also deliberately made the movie look like it was made in the 30s. He filmed it in crackly black and white, and used a lot of circle wipes instead of basic cuts. The opening credits resemble those of early movies with the credits over a static image, and often, scenes will completely fade to black for a moment before fading back in to a new scene. These antiquated effects are extremely noticeable to audiences who aren't used to them, and they help make the film seem like an authentic classic horror movie, which helps accentuate the anachronistic elements of the film.

I don't want to give away too many of the film's wonderful jokes. All you have to know is that this is a film that everyone should see during their life.

Up next: Summer of films...

Blazing Saddles: Not Your Father's Western

I'm not sure if this comparison has ever been made, but Brooks' Blazing Saddles is somewhat akin to Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in that both works attack ideas of racial inferiority by continuously having the antagonists use racial slurs and put forth ideas of inferiority. Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most frequently banned books in American history because people don't understand that Twain was attacking stereotypes. And I have met a few people who find Blazing Saddles to be one of the most racist and offensive movies ever produced. In reality, Blazing Saddles is both a send-up of various Western movie cliches and an attack on the way minorities (especially blacks) were treated in the 19th century and continue to be treated today.

Using a plot that formed the basis of too many Westerns to name (an illegal land taking), Brooks tells the story of Bart, the first black sheriff in the ol' west. Bart starts the movie as a poor railroad worker who is continuously abused by the white construction bosses (all of whom are much less intelligent than Bart is, allowing Bart and his fellow workers to play practical jokes on their unsuspecting employers). Meanwhile, State Attorney General Hedley Lamarr wants to run the citizens of Rock Ridge out of town in order to buy the land at a low price; a new railway has to be diverted through Rock Ridge, and the land will skyrocket in value as a result. After the traditional method of pillaging fails to work, Lamarr decides to get the town to implode by appointing Bart as sheriff. At first, the plan looks like it will succeed, as the citizens of Rock Ridge try as hard as possible to make life hard for Bart. However, as with the railroad overseers, Bart is much smarter than pretty much everyone in Rock Ridge, and he is able to stay out of trouble through his wits. When Bart saves the town from Lamarr's savage flunky, the citizens finally realize that Bart is a good sheriff.

Bart is aided by his new deputy and friend, Jim "The Waco Kid", a former gunslinger who turned to alcohol after accidentally shooting a kid who spooked him. Jim is strangely tolerant for someone from this era, but he has to be for the message to work. In the film, the people who are intolerant are either antagonists or they learn to be tolerant. Bart needed a friend to help him get through the early rough patch in Rock Ridge, and he and Jim make a good pair. By the end, the citizens of Rock Ridge are still not models of tolerance, but the experience with the intelligent, competent, and charming Bart has shown them not to judge someone based on the color of their skin.

The movie is hilarious in addition to moral. The film satirizes Western cliches and continuously breaks the fourth wall, which is something Brooks is known for. People often confuse Hedley Lamarr with actress Hedy Lamarr (who wouldn't have been born yet in the year the film takes place), and the entire ending sequence was meta heaven. The infamous campfire scene may be the first fart joke in a major studio film (oh Mel Brooks, what hath thee wrought?). The film was truly a landmark for comedy films.

Up next: Abbie someone...

Spaceballs: A Parody Far Far Away...

Before ever seeing this movie, I knew almost half the lines, thanks to the endless quoting carried on by the members of my Boy Scout troop (it was this and Monty Python and the Holy Grail that were repeated ad nauseum). This was the first Mel Brooks movie I saw and it was a great entryway into his movies; it isn't his best, but it is a great movie. Skewering the Star Wars films as well as a few other sci-fi franchises (Star Trek, Alien, and Planet of the Apes) and various real-world ideas, Spaceballs follows the heroic Lone Starr and his first mate Barf as they try to save Princess Vespa from the evil Dark Helmet of Planet Spaceball. President Skroob, the corrupt leader of Planet Spaceball, squandered the planet's air supply and now their only hope is to steal the air from their neighboring planet, Druidia. Druidia is guarded by an air shield, and Skroob and Helmet plan to use Vespa as a bargaining chip to get the code to the air shield from Vespa's father, King Roland.

It sounds simplistic, and it is, but so are the Star Wars movies, if you think about. Good and evil are very clearly defined and the first movie is about rescuing a princess from a a man in a black suit who is trying to use her to find the location of a planet. But that isn't a slight against either Spaceballs or Star Wars; each film has plenty of greatness to elevate the films to the greatness they are remembered for. First off, the world(s) of Spaceballs is extremely well done, and the visual references to the Star Wars universe are incredible. The Spaceballs' uniforms are very similar to those of the Empire, the Dinks are dressed similar to Jawas, and the detention center evokes the same scene in Star Wars. But Brooks was able to use these similarities to accentuate the absurdity of many aspects of the Star Wars universe in particular and space operas in general. Spaceball-1, the flagship of the Spaceball fleet, is so enormous that it takes almost two minutes for it to go across the screen in the opening scene. Star Destroyers and Super Star Destroyers were enormous, and seeing Spaceball-1 makes us think about why the Empire needed such huge ships. Spaceball-1 needs to be so big in order to accomodate a mall, a 3-ring circus, and a zoo. The Spaceball infantrymen are clearly graduates of the Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship, seeing as how none of them can hit any of the heroes, but Vespa, who has supposedly never used a gun until the events of the movie, can mow an entire battalion down with one shot for each man. And the multitude of buttons and dials on ships that seemingly have no purpose was parodied when Dark Helmet went to look at the radar screen only to be confused as to what he was looking at. Col. Sandurz, his second-in-command, had to explain that the screen was not radar, but a coffee maker (Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones wouldn't be made for another 15 years, but there is a great example of this effect in that movie; there is a scene in which Padme pushes a button, one among many, in her spaceship which does one function, and with a second press of the same button, it performs a completely different function).

Brooks also makes fun of the marketing of the Star Wars films by filling the film with Spaceballs merchandise. Yogurt, a wise Yoda analogue, runs a store devoted to the movie full of shitty items with the Spaceballs logo on it, including a breakfast serial, a plush doll of himself, coloring books, and a flamethrower (the kids love that one). Throughout the rest of the film, various characters are seen using Spaceballs merch; Helmet and Sanders watch part of the cassette of the film to find where Lone Starr and Vespa escaped to, Skroob uses toilet paper with Helmet's picture on it, and Helmet plays with action figures of the various characters (including himself).

None of Mel Brooks' regular actors appeared in this film (except Brooks himself and Dom Deluise in a brief cameo as Pizza the Hutt), but the film still had a wonderful cast, with special praise to Rick Moranis as the Napoleonic Dark Helmet, John Candy as the half man/half dog Barf (parodying Chewie), and George Wyner as Col. Sandurz, the second-in-command on Spaceball-1. Sandurz is somewhere between Kif Kroker from Futurama (the voice of reason) and Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a bit of a coward).

With few exceptions, everything in this movie worked. The plot-based jokes and the meta-jokes were very funny, and the actors did wonderful jobs with their characters. Spaceballs is definitely the gold standard of Star Wars parodies.

Up next: Black Bart...