Strangers on a Train

What's better than Hitchcock?

John Cleese and Marty Feldman in a great descent into comic absurdity from 1967! Click below to watch and laugh.

Kids today will never know how tough it was...

... what with dial-up modems, and VHS cassettes that could be eaten by the players, only three or four channels on television--and if you missed a show, you would have to wait MONTHS before there was even a slim chance of it being broadcast again. And that's if you were lucky. And we didn't have these fancy cellphones... oh no. We had to go inside if we wanted to make phone calls!

But speaking of kids not knowing how good they have it, here's something to brighten your day, as you spend a few moments with some folks who had it even worse that you did: It's a classic television comedy sketch from "At Last: The 1948 Show" featuring future members of the Monte Python comedy troupe and the great Marty Feldman.

'Young Frankenstein' is timeless spoof

Young Frankenstein (1974)
Starring: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Peter Boyle, Madeline Khan, and Cloris Leachman
Director: Mel Brooks
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder), after spending his youth trying to live down his family's reputation as a bunch of mad scientists and nutty monster-makers, inherits his grandfather's castle and original laboratory... and ends up trying his hand at being a mad scientist and creating monsters. With an illiterate hunchback (Feldman) and a nurse who is well-endowed in every department but brains (Garr), he creates a monster that his grandfather, father, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other mad-scientist relations would be envious of. But can the torch-wielding peasants be far off?


"Young Frankenstein" is one of the all-time classic comedies. Like "High Anxiety", Mel Brooks' spoof of Alfred Hitchcock movies, this film is shows a great affection and respect for the material it is poking fun at--the sequels to the original "Frankenstein" film from Universal, such as "Son of Frankenstein" and "The Ghost of Frankenstein". (And let's face it... as much as we may love those pictures, we've found it worthy of mockery that every single member of the Frankenstein family--with the exception of Baroness Eva Frankenstein in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"--who comes into possession of the original monster-making recipe becomes obsessed with creating another one (or reviving the original creature).

And Brook makes fun of all the unintentional hilarious bits of the various Universal Frankentein sequels, makes some of the non-harlious bits--Inspector Krogh from "Son of Frankenstein", a very well-acted, well-written, if idiosyncratic character, that I think it the best part of that film--the objects of spot-on and hilarious lampooning.

While the film's success can be credited in a large part to its hilarious script--which provies a non-stop flow of puns, sight-gags, and insane nonsequitors within the frame of a story that could easily have been featured in a Frankenstein movie from the 1940s--and the best-of-their-careers performances from Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Teri Garr, the fact that Brooks took pains to match the sets, filming techniques, and lighting-styles of the Frankenstein films he's parodying makes this the truly exceptional and effective comedy that it is.

"Young Frankenstein" is a movie for fans of the classic Universal films and lovers of well-crafted satire alike. It is one of Mel Brooks' finest films, and every actor featured is likewise is at their very finest. (Also, where else are you going to see Frankenstein's Monster perform "Putting on the Ritz"?)