Bride of Son of Young Frankenstein – The Parody

Last night while my wife and daughter entertained trick or treater’s, I watched a little of the old time horror stories on AMC.  Unfortunately for me I was suffering from a massive sinus infection and felt like the BLOB.  I did enjoy watching a bit of the Son of Frankenstein and immediately noticed the similarity to Young Frankenstein. Bela Lugosi stole the show as Ygor.  You see Ygor was hung for his relationship to the first Frankenstein and his hanging broke his neck, but he did not die.  In the movie he knocked on a bone of the side of his neck.  Now this is supposed to be scary, but I laughed my hiney off.  I just couldn’t get rid of the image of Marty Feldman.  Then there was inspector Krogh, a policeman, who used his mechanical arm to clean his glasses, etc.   Then I just lost it, I found myself out of the horror movie and into the comedy.  Inspector Krogh knocks on the door with giant knockers and the scene with Terri Garr and Gene Wilder came to my mind.

Parodies of classics are good for us all.  It demonstrates that we can learn to not take everything so seriously and to laugh and smile.  I also noticed some truly bizarre things about this movie classic before my med’s kicked in and sent me to bed.

1. Frankenstein’s son worked in a coat and tie at all times while in the lab.  Nothing says evil like a dapper mad scientist.
2. The stairs to the upper portion of the castle had no cross bars to prevent anyone from slipping and falling to their death.
3. The furniture arrangement for such a large castle was ultra minimalist.

This was the last time Boris Karloff donned the monster outfit and uttered such brilliant dialogue “Uh, um, ugh, uh, uh, uh.”  I expected Peter Boyle to go into a dance routine of “Putting on the Ritz.” All that was missing was Frau Blucher and Elizabeth “All you men are alike! Seven or eight quickies and your off with the boys boasting… I think I”m in love with him.”  We all know it was the monster’s Schwanstuker that made him the lady’s man, uh, monster.

There are many things that make me laugh, but only a few that will bring tears to my eyes.  Young Frankenstein is possibly in my top three most funny movies of all time.   So if you are ever in need of a moment of cheering up, here’s what I suggest. Invite over some good friends, put young Frankenstein on your Blu-Ray, turn off the sound and ad-lib to the scenes.  There is nothing wrong with you creating your own parody.

Go and have an Abby Normal day.