Having covered the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein on our Film at 11 podcast a couple weeks ago (Ep. 34), I thought it would be a fun idea to close out this year’s Halloween run by watching Mel Brooks’ classic 1974 parody Young Frankenstein with my son Joseph. Sadly, he didn’t respond to it as enthusiastically as I’d hoped.
Partly, this is my own fault. I thought it would be funny to trick the boy and not tell him in advance that the movie was a comedy, which wound up leaving him perplexed by what he was watching. Also partly, however, I think Brooks’ humor in this particular project just went over my son’s head.
In a way, Young Frankenstein is an uncharacteristic type of comedy for Mel Brooks, in how straight he plays almost the whole thing. Compared to Blazing Saddles or Spaceballs, most of the humor here is quite subtle and understated. Personally, I think that’s the genius of the movie, but I fear Joseph just didn’t get the joke. Perhaps he’ll come to appreciate it more when he’s older? Time will tell.
| Title: | Young Frankenstein |
| Year of Release: | 1974 |
| Director: | Mel Brooks |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | DVD |
The Blu-ray
Twentieth Century Fox released Young Frankenstein on Blu-ray in 2008. To my knowledge, subsequent reissues and anniversary editions have all been repackages of the same disc. At the time of this writing, the studio (under current corporate ownership by Disney) has not remastered the movie for 4K Ultra HD. Nor is the title streaming anywhere at the moment, not even on Disney+ or Hulu.
For a disc from 2008, the Blu-ray holds up pretty well. The 1.85:1 black-and-white image is acceptably sharp and has nice grayscale. Contrast looks appropriate for the most part, but some some black crush and loss of shadow detail are noticeable every so often.
Another area where the disc leaves room for improvement is its handling of film grain, which comes across very noisy. The presence of occasional minor scratches points to this master being sourced from a film element somewhere downstream of the camera negative. I think the grain is a little exaggerated and not encoded particularly well. A modern 4K remaster might be able to handle these aspects better, should one ever happen.
The movie’s soundtrack is available in a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 remix or the original mono, but the latter is limited to lossy Dolby Digital format. I chose the lossless 5.1 track and, because I was watching with my son, wasn’t able to run any comparisons during our viewing.
The 5.1 mix is pretty restrained, anyway. The track is very front-focused with little to no noticeable surround usage. Expanding the John Morris score to stereo is about as aggressive as it gets. Fidelity is acceptable. The score is a little boomy with its bass and thunder sound effects are weak, but neither problem is too distracting.
Bonus features are quite robust, starting with an audio commentary by Mel Brooks and a text trivia track. If your Blu-ray player still has Bonus View functionality enabled, you can watch the movie with occasional picture-in-picture pop-ups. (If not, the interviews and other making-of segments can be watched independently afterward.) Also available are a few retrospective featurettes, some deleted scenes, outtakes, an isolated score track, vintage interviews, trailers, TV spots, a photo gallery, and a so-called “Blücher Button” that doesn’t seem to do anything on my player.
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