Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(1974)

As an homage to this film, I shall be writing this Non-review in black and white.

With a new Naked Gun film and “Space Balls 2: The Search for More Money” both on the horizon, it seems screwball comedies are making a comeback. That bout we had with the Scary Movie franchise and the Epic Movie franchise killed this kind of comedy film in my opinion as every joke became about sex.

I don’t mind the occasional sex related joke if it’s actually funny and my parents and/or kids aren’t in the room, but when the entire movie is a raunchy sex romp played for laughs, that’s just boring. The American Pie franchise is not screwball comedy but I throw those right in there with the previously mentioned Epic and Scary films because it’s all just nasty unfunny stupidity that I abhor. To think Leslie Nielsen actually got involved at one point with that garbage… it tears me up inside. Why Leslie, why!?!

The Naked Guns and the various Mel Brooks  comedies have plenty of jokes based on sex but no one is engaging in auto-fellatio or being graped by a ghost. There’s a difference.

Everyone has either heard of or seen Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein. It’s classic Mel Brooks comedy at its finest. I was a kid when I first saw it. I thought Marty Feldman was funny but I didn’t understand why Gene Wilder was yelling all the time. Yelling always freaked me out as a kid and kind of does still.

Seeing the film now, I kind of feel bad for Marty with his ophthalmopathy but I can see the humor in Gene’s yelling.

It’s amazing to me this was permitted to be filmed in black and white. Mel and Gene fought for it though. Production companies are so reluctant to film in black and white but it can be such a beautiful medium and can really add to the atmosphere of a film. It made so much sense to do this in black and white.  Every modern film presented in black and white that I’ve seen, I appreciated that it was in black and white. I may not have always liked the movie as a whole but at least it looked cool. I need to watch Godzilla Minus One in black and white. Oo, I hope it has film scratches and reel marks too! And poor audio quality! Oo! I hope the film is slightly sped up and has a musical score by Scott Joplin. And! Every time Godzilla roars a dialogue card comes up that says “Roar!” That would be just grand.

The gamble paid off too. This silly black and white film, which cost a mere 2.8 million dollars to make, grossed internationally 86.2 million dollars. I’d say that’s a success. It’s no wonder Brooks did Silent Movie (1976) two years later. The man was a cash cow!

There’s not much to say about Young Frankenstein that hasn’t already been said. This, like many of Brooks’ productions, are so quotable. It’s culturally significant at this point. Many lines from this film are quoted by people who don’t even know what they’re quoting from. If you haven’t seen this, you need to.

That or face the awkwardness next time you’re at a party and you don’t understand why everyone makes horse whinny noises after someone says the name “Frau Blücher!”

Look for Arthur Malet (above) as the Village Elder. Many will remember him as an elderly Tootles in Hook (1991).

Also, look for an uncredited Gene Hackman (above this paragraph but below the previous one) as the Blindman, one scene in particular ending with an ad-libbed line that caught the crew so off guard they had to abruptly fade to black in post production so as to avoid the sound of the crew laughing. Great stuff.