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In 1974, Mel Brooks got together a bunch of his funniest friends and made a send-up of a film genre that he loved as a kid but that they just weren’t making anymore: the stiff, talky, black & white horror movies of the ‘30s. The result was Young Frankenstein. (As an aside, later the same year he did the exact same thing, except with Westerns instead of monster movies. The result was Blazing Saddles. Pretty solid year.) Nowadays if you gather your comedian friends to have fun and make a hugely profitable movie, they call you Adam Sandler. Back then they called you the king of film parody. And it’s good to be the king.Young Frankenstein retells the story of a differently-pronounced Dr. Frankenstein (the incomparable Gene Wilder) and his henchmen and hangers-on (Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman) as he creates life (Peter Boyle plays the monster with goofy innocence) and then promptly loses control of it, to the dismay of nearby villagers. In retrospect a surprisingly faithful rendition of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein from 1931, you still shouldn’t come in expecting a serious or … wait, have you never seen it? What are you waiting for? Stop reading this immediately, and go buy as many tickets as you can responsibly afford.
Stick around after each of the screenings for a FREE post-show Film Talk audience discussion and Q&A with retired University of South Florida film professor Harriet Deer on Sunday, and with retired Tampa Bay Times film critic Steve Persall on Thursday.
1974 / 1h 46m / PG / Comedy
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Tampa Theatre, 711 N Franklin St, Tampa, United States
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