Never before or since has Mel Brooks nailed a parody so precisely as Young Frankenstein. Forget the vulgar Blazing Saddles and the meandering History of the World Part I, Brooks and star Gene Wilder really did their homework on this one. Primarily using the Universal classic Son of Frankenstein as a template, they’ve mined every deliciously ridiculous moment from the monster series.
Arguably the best of the monster mash-ups. It begins with the awakening of presumed-dead wolf man, Larry Talbot, and follows him to a London asylum, from whence he then travels across Europe to the fictional town of Vasalia (which has inexplicably become Frankenstein’s home) to find a cure for his lycanthropy.
A more direct monster movie than Frankenstein. What it lacks in complexity, however, it makes up for in performances, especially Claud Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, and no less than Dracula himself, chameleon Bela Lugosi as Bela, the cursed gypsy fortune teller who passes his burden onto Lon Chaney, Jr.’s Lawrence Talbot. Chaney, for his part, delivers an inadvertently creepy performance as the foredoomed aristocrat.
I’m going to vex a few people as I skip right over Bride of Frankenstein (the Batman & Robin of Frankenstein movies) and straight into the equally campy but slightly more straight-faced second sequel. Basil Rathbone is perfect as the disdainful Wolf von Frankenstein, unwelcome heir of the now completely redesigned Castle Frankenstein.
By no means the first horror movie ever made (nor, in fact, the first Frankenstein movie ever made) but James Whale’s eternal classic is the fountainhead from which has sprung the modern horror movie. Though he would later go on to the make the deliberately silly Bride of Frankenstein (sorry folks, but it’s nowhere near as good as this film), here Whale constructs an elegantly tragic frightener that taps into the timeless theme of man playing god.
You would think that by their very nature (demonic worship of sorcery and witchcraft) all of the Harry Potter films would qualify for the harvest moon hall-of-fame. However, this third chapter is the most Halloween-themed movie of the series. In addition to the standard-issue witchery on display, this one highlights the classic Halloween tropes: