Brooks’s targets are James Whale’s “Frankenstein” (1931) and “ Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), the first the most influential and the second probably the best of the 1930s Hollywood horror movies. That’s partly because the very genre he’s satirizing gives him a strong narrative he can play against. (Explaining this process, Brooks once loftily declared, “My movies rise below vulgarity.”) “Young Frankenstein” is as funny as we expect a Mel Brooks comedy to be, but it’s more than that: It shows artistic growth and a more sure-handed control of the material by a director who once seemed willing to do literally anything for a laugh. His movies weren’t just funny, they were aggressive and subversive, making us laugh even when we really should have been offended. In his two best comedies, before this, “The Producers” and “ Blazing Saddles,” Brooks revealed a rare comic anarchy. Now all that’s involved is a little grave-robbing and a trip to the handy local Brain Depository, and the Frankenstein family is back in business. The young man had always rejected his grandfather’s medical experiments as impossible, but he changes his mind after he discovers a book entitled How I Did It by Frederick Frankenstein. Frankenstein quickly returns to Transylvania and the old ancestral castle, where he is awaited by the faithful houseboy Igor, the voluptuous lab assistant Inga, and the mysterious housekeeper Frau Blucher, whose very name causes horses to rear in fright.
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