When Frank Was Funny: Two Comedies Helped Resurrect the Creature’s Enduring Appeal

It’s hardly news when Frankenstein’s misshapen monster makes someone scream. But scream with laughter?

Two of the more beloved outliers in the Frankenstein canon aim directly for the funny bone, with payoffs for fans of classic horror and comedy. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) was a calculated attempt by Universal Pictures to revive two of its flagging franchises: the ensemble monster movie crossed with the slapstick farces of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, all of which had seen better days.

The result was a hoot and a hit, with Bud and Lou as Chick and Wilbur, lowly Floridian baggage handlers tasked with transporting mysterious crates to a nearby House of Horrors. Inside those bulky boxes lie the coffin of Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi reprising his most famous role) and the soon-to-be-reanimated body of the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange), with Wolfman Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) in close pursuit.

The shtick is familiar — only Wilbur sees the ghouls for the longest time — but the twist is novel: Wilbur’s inexplicably glamorous girlfriend (Lenore Aubert) is scheming with Dracula to put simpleton Wilbur’s pliable brain into the monster. The film led to two more monster-filled pairings with the comic duo.

This spoof was fun, but it pales next to the loving homage created by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, 1974’s Young Frankenstein. This instant-classic parody was as inventive with its gags as it was meticulous in its re-creation of the black-and-white cinematography and production design of the James Whale standard-bearers, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.

Having fought for cinematic authenticity, the filmmakers gave free rein to the brilliant cast, with Wilder’s Frederick Frankenstein (“Fronk-en-steen,” he insists) given hilarious support by the likes of wild-eyed, movable humpbacked Marty Feldman as Igor (“Eye-gor”) and Cloris Leachman as fearsome housekeeper Frau Blücher, whose very name sends horses whinnying. Peter Boyle’s portrayal of the monster is both sensitive and side-splitting, suffering slapstick indignities in his scene with the blind hermit (Gene Hackman), mangling Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz” in top hat and tails — a scene Wilder fought with Brooks to include — and winning over Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth (the great Madeline Kahn) with his “enormous schwanzstucker.”

Wilder would later reflect that “even though we were doing a comedy, a ridiculous comedy,” Young Frankenstein stayed true to Mary Shelley’s classic theme of a misunderstood creature who yearns to be loved. “I think that’s why it lives.”

Or, to fracture a familiar phrase, maybe it takes a sense of humor to soothe the savage beast.

Fun Facts About Dr. Frankenstein's Lab Assistant Igor

Frankenstein’s hunchback assistant, Igor, was not in the original novel by Mary Shelley but has become as famous as the mad doctor and monster.

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Frankenstein

October 2024

Frankenstein’s monster has haunted us onscreen for nearly 100 years. Celebrate the O.G. creature in the movies and culture.

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