it “a loving commentary on our love-
hate affairs with monsters.” Brooks and
Wilder’s screenplay was nominated for
an Academy Award, though they lost
to Francis Ford Coppola and Mario
Puzo’s Godfather Part II. But Young
Frankenstein is now considered a
stone-cold classic, having been recog-
nized by the American Film Institute
as one of the funniest American com-
edies ever. (It even became a modestly
successful Broadway musical in 2007.)
In the end, the film that Brooks had
hoped “would transport audiences the
way I was transported as a kid sitting in
the dark in Williamsburg” succeeded
beyond his wildest dreams.W
hat’s next for the monster who
seems never to die? Almost 90
years after Universal unleashed
its dark-horse horror film on an
unsuspecting public, the studio has
created what it calls a “Dark Universe”
franchise to unite a series of remakesof its classic monster movies. The
overarching idea focuses on Dr. Henry
Jekyll (Hyde’s better half), who over-
sees an organization called Prodigium,
which monitors—and sometimes
destroys—renegade monsters.
The franchise began with 2017’s
The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, and
will continue with the 2019 release of
Bride of Frankenstein, directed by Bill
Condon, who won a Best Adapted
Screenplay Oscar for 1998’s Gods and
Monsters, about James Whale, based
on the novel Father of Frankenstein,
by Christopher Bram. (Condon also
directed the film.) “You’ve got to cre-
ate a monster that you’re afraid of, that
you’re terrified of, but you can still
identify with, and that line was never
walked better than by James Whale,”
Condon has said, adding that he hopes
his film is “at least a tribute to what
Whale might have done if he’d made
a third Frankenstein movie and he’d
done it in the 21st century.” nTHE 2018 ANIMATED FILM
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer
Vacation featured (above, left to
right) Vlad Dracula (Mel Brooks),
Murray the Mummy (Keegan-
Michael Key), Griffin (David
Spade), Dracula (Adam Sandler),
Mavis Dracula (Selena Gomez),
Frank (Kevin James), and Eunice
(Fran Drescher). Opposite:
Directed by Tim Burton,
Frankenweenie is a 2012 film
about Victor, a boy who brings
back from the dead his beloved
dog, Sparky, after the pup is hit
by a car. It was based on a short
film that Burton made in 1984.94 LIFE FRANKENSTEIN