Wayne's 31 Days of Horror Film Challenge Day 2 - Young Frankenstein

Day Two

“Horror Comedy”

It’s difficult to pick a horror-comedy without feeling like I’ve left something important on the shelf. The Return of the Living Dead (1985, Dir. Dan O’Bannon) is easily my go-to horror movie when I want something familiar on in the background. I know it back to front and I go back to it so often because of the indelible mark it left on me when I first saw it at the tender age of (about) 12 because it had something I’d never really seen before- a dark sense of humour. It was bleakly funny and at times ludicrous but because it played the laughs pretty straight it was just so nihilistically funny.

Then there’s Fright Night (1985, Dir Tom Holland). I’d been brought up on Hammer horror movies and Christopher Lee was and will always be Count Dracula to me. THE Dracula. The quintessential Vampire. Kind of like your first Doctor Who. Your Doctor. The one that first made the mark for you. By the time Fright Night found its way into our VHS top-loader the wider world of vampiric cinema was readily available in our local Videoworld or from the fella who came around with the mini-van mobile video store. I’d yet to experience Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark and wouldn’t for a while to come but the smiling fanged visage on the poster art for Fright Night was just too enticing to ignore. The film didn’t disappoint either. Again, the laughs underlined the horror. The brilliance of Roddy McDowall’s Peter Vincent and how he might represent the “old world of horror”- shackled in formality and a restraint, now coming to realise the fake cobwebs and rubber bats don’t represent the true version of the modern vampire. Deadly, suburban and critically astute. Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) has evolved with the times, he’s seen all the old horror movies and he relishes his immortal life. He’s the new world, there’s a knowing wink there that allows us to like this monster despite his demonstrable evil.

So, after some deliberation (read: A LOT) I’ve come to Young Frankenstein (1974, Dir. Mel Brooks) Chronologically I probably found this much later than I should. It’s smart and brilliantly funny and honestly, I haven’t watched this in a number of years- but in times such as these it’s the familiar and the reliable we fall back on.

Mel Brooks is just a funny man. His filmography dances around various genres- Westerns, Sci-Fi and, a couple of times, Horror. His masterpiece, Young Frankenstein is a superb confluence of talents and shows a clear reverence for the film it sets out to lampoon. Gene Wilder, manic and bombastic, is brilliant as the obsessed young doctor Frankenstein. The black and white cinematography is beautiful and the overall staging worthy of James Wale’s original vision. And its funny. Sometimes the cheap jokes are the best jokes and there’s plenty to enjoy simply by being so close to the original in terms of aesthetic and it’s that verisimilitude that twangs a particular heart string. Its familiar to us and because it’s familiar it can veer off for a gag without arousing too much suspicion.