Lending his burlesque touch to 1970s genre revision, Mel Brooks followed his hit western Blazing Saddles with this parody of 1930s Universal horror movies. Determined to live down his familys reputation, Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (co-screenwriter Gene Wilder) insists on pronouncing his name Fronckensteen and denies interest in replicating his grandfathers experiments. But when he is lured by Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman) to discover the tantalizingly titled journal How I Did It in his grandfathers castle, he cannot resist. With the help of voluptuous Inga (Teri Garr), wall-eyed assistant Igor (Marty Feldman), and a purloined brain, Frankenstein creates his monster (Peter Boyle). Igor, however, stole the wrong brain, and the monster tears off into the countryside, encountering a little girl and a blind hermit (Gene Hackman). Frankenstein finds the monster and trains him to do a little Puttin On the Ritz soft-shoe, but the monster escapes again, this time seducing Frankensteins uptight fiancée Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) with his, ahem, sweet mystery. His love life and experiment in shambles, Frankenstein finally finds a way to create the being he had planned. Shooting in gleaming black-and-white, with sets and props from the 1930s and appropriate fright music by John Morris, Brooks cheeky attitude towards the Hollywood past attracted a large audience, turning it into one of the most popular 1974 releases after (what else?) Blazing Saddles. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide