Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks (U.S., 1974)

Take Gene Wilder’s wild-haired hysteria, Cloris Leachman’s pasty-faced teutonics, Madeline Kahn’s pinched-mouth operatics, Marty Feldman’s eye-popping ecstasy, Peter Boyle’s hulking histrionics, stitch them together, and you get a mind-boggling monstrosity, complete with whinnying horses, a dance number set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” a “Schwanstuker” the size of Delaware, and a mad scientist, pronounced “Fronk-en-steen,” who rejects his family’s legacy. Mel Brooks was never zanier as he does Transylvania with a twist, aided by coscribbler Wilder. A lot of the jokery hits below the borscht belt—Igor’s nomadic hump and Frau Blücher’s Germanically slung “Ovaltine”—but it certainly put new life into Mary Shelley’s creature feature.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Brooks, Gene Wilder. Photographed by Gerald Hirschfeld. With Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Cloris Leachman. (107 mins, B&W, DCP, From Criterion Pictures)