Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s spoof of classic 1930s monster movies – particularly James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, maintains the notion of those original films that the doctor’s reanimated creature isn’t necessarily evil, just misunderstood and clumsy. As played by a lumbering Peter Boyle, he clearly doesn’t know his own strengths and weaknesses, as is apparent in two scenes that are direct parodies of scenes in Whale’s films, the scene with the little girl who sees him as a playmate and the scene with the blind hermit (an unrecognizable Gene Hackman) who sees him as a dinner companion.
Indeed, despite his abnormal brain, the monster could indeed become a sophisticate, as hilariously demonstrated by his deft soft-shoe routine in the famous “Puttin’ on the Ritz” sequence. By the end of the film, with the mind-meld between the doctor and his creation, the line between man and monster has been blurred beyond recognition.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q89MQiyunxs]