Don’t miss a special one-time screening of the new documentary Remembering Gene Wilder, Sunday, April 21 at 2:00pm!
Mel Brooks’ hilariously “abby-normal” homage to 1930s Universal monster movies is one of the strangest, funniest, most brilliantly conceived comedies to ever escape from Hollywood. The fantastically nutty Gene Wilder (who co-wrote the script with Brooks) stars as Dr. Frankenstein (“That’s Frahnk-en-steen”), grandson of the famed mad scientist. When Freddy discovers that he is the inheritor of his grandfather’s estate, he journeys to Frankenstein Castle in Transylvania, uncovers the old man’s notebooks, and is awakened to the idea of continuing his infamous relative’s highly questionable experiments in dead tissue re-animation. Soon, our frantic hero is embroiled in a riotous scheme to breathe life into a tap-dancing monster (Peter Boyle) with demented help from his bug-eyed hunchback assistant Igor (Marty Feldman), a ditzy wench named Inga (Teri Garr), Freddy’s debutante fiancé Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), and the frightening Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). Filmed in glorious black and white, and featuring actual sets and props from the original Frankenstein films from the ‘30s, Young Frankenstein is a zany classic guaranteed to make you feel like “Putting on the Ritz!” (Dir. by Mel Brooks, 1974, USA, 106 mins., Rated PG)