There will come a time when a director paves the way to a certain genre in movies. Mel Brooks changed comedy with his outstanding movies. Young Frankenstein is a new kind of movie for the 70s. It had the technology to film in color, but the director decided to shoot it in black and white. It’s a horror comedy, but has a lot of heart. This movie took a lot of risks and it paid off. At a budget of $2.78 million, this movie generated $86.2 million. So why did this movie generate so much money? Because it’s simply a great movie. It’s enjoyable, hilarious, well acted, has a great story, and well thought out and put together. All the actors did a great job and played their parts well. The jokes were clever and many were unexpected. Even though the film is a parody of the classic Frankenstein movies of the 30s, Young Frankenstein can still be enjoyed by those who haven’t seen those past horror movies.

Young Frankenstein is written by Gene Wilder, who also stars in the movie, and Mel Brooks. It is directed by Mel Brooks who also released the film Blazing Saddles that same year. The film was released in December 15, 1974. The film is about Young Dr. Frankenstein who is embarrassed by his grandfather Victor Frankenstein’s legacy. He calls his grandfather a madman for his crazy experiments and wants to legitimize himself to the science community. We find out that he inherited his family’s estate in Transylvania and he travels to Europe to see the property. Upon arriving, he meets Igor, the servant, Inga, the assistant, and Frau Blucher, the housekeeper. After a night in the estate, he discovers his grandfather’s lab and private library. After reading his grandfather’s journals, he decided to continue his grandfather’s work to bring back the dead. Soon after, we are introduced to Frankenstein’s monster who is brought back from the dead.

The director, Mel Brooks, wanted to recapture the look and feel of the old Frankenstein movies from the 30s and did a great job. He did it by shooting it in black and white, having a 30s style opening credits and scene transitions, and having a music score that recaptures those essence. It even received two Academy Awards nominations, one for best sound and another for best adapted screenplay. It became a box office success and had high critical praise from both the past and present critics. Imbd.com gave it a score of 8 out of 10 and rottentomatoes.com gave it a high score of 94 percent tomatometer. It is a wonderfully hilarious film and even has Gene Hackman playing a  blind man in one the funniest scenes in the movie. The blind man, desperate for friendship, invites the monster into his house for a bowl of soup, a glass of wine, and a cigar. The blind man ends up pouring the hot soup into the monster’s lap, breaking the monster’s glass of wine as he’s about to drink it, and lights the monster’s thumb on fire mistaking it for the cigar. And this is just one of the many hilarious scenes in the film.

Roger Ebert had many great things to say about Young Frankenstein in his review written in 1974. He complimented Mel Brooks directing by saying, “his most disciplined and visually inventive film” and “it shows artistic growth and a more sure-handed control of the material by the director.” He also complimented the movie itself with saying, “it works on a couple of levels: first as comedy, and then as a weirdly touching story in its own right.” In a more recent review from The Film Magazine written in October 2020 by Christopher Conner, he called the film, “a horror comedy for the ages.” Even though the film is about 46 years old at the time of the review, Conner still says, “Young Frankenstein is often laugh out loud hilarious.” Overall, his view is, “It stands apart as a great film in its own right, separate from its influences, striking a near perfect balance between homage and send up.” Both critics from the past and present acknowledged how great the film is and stated it in similar ways.

Young Frankenstein came out the same year as one historical political event and two historical sport events. It was a very different time back then. In April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron became the new all-time home run hitter and surpassed Babe Ruth. The importance of this event was that Hank Aaron was an African American man. Baseball, America’s favorite pass time, was no longer dominated by a white man and Americans had to get use to this change. There was also a historical political event that occurred in 1974 and that was Richard Nixon’s resignation which happened on August 8, 1974. A U.S. Presidential resignation have never occurred in U.S. history before then and I’m pretty sure many people were surprised to see this happen. There would be another historical event in 1974 which occurred in October 30.  Entitled, “The Rumble in the Jungle,” it was a heavy weight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight was watched worldwide by one billion viewers which was record breaking. It also had 50 million viewers watching it on pay-per-view and earned an estimated $100 million. With the changes in baseball, the events in politics, and the spectacular event in boxing, Young Frankenstein fit right in with the times.