It’s a line you either know or you don’t, which I suppose could be said for so many of the lines from that film. It is one of those movies that sticks with you long after you’ve seen it, and carries with it the power to bring people together. It is also one of the few ways I’ve figured out how to reminisce with people I don’t know. You quote a line, and if they are in the know, they’ll quote one back. It’s a great way to have entire conversations with people without really talking about anything.

Spouting off your favorite lines from movies are one of those skill sets that may not have been useful to Liam Neeson in getting his daughter back, but it is a great skill set for getting people to talk to one another at a party while you’re waiting for the alcohol to show up.

The other thing I love about is that in the right circumstances you can reenact the entire film from that moment on. Those circumstances being, the other people in the room love and therefore have watched the movie as many times as you have, thus having the whole thing memorized.

So Cinemark (a movie theater chain) has been revisiting a few classic films over the past few months; showing one old movie for one night only, with a new old movie the next week. Well yesterday, on Halloween, they showed Young Frankenstein. Since this film was released the same year I was born, I’ve never had the chance to see it on the big screen. So between staying at home waiting for little people (kids) in costumes to show up on my doorstep, and plead for free candy, or going to see one of my favorite comedies on the silver screen, I figured the little sugar addicts would have plenty of ‘junk’ without my yearly contribution.

What I didn’t realize until after we got to the movie was that my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh had never seen this film before. I’ll admit, there was a part of me that refused to believe this was true, but as she started laughing at the lines, lines I have been regurgitating for close to thirty years now, there was a certain quality to her laugh that convinced me she was a Young Frankenstein virgin.

There’s a difference in laughing at something for the first time and laughing at something because you have seen it 100 times and your love and appreciation for it keeps you laughing every time you see it.

And even thought I wanted to quote every line right along with the movie, in much the same way as a teenage girl feels compelled to sing along to every song sung at every Adele concert ever, I employed a Jedi’s amount of self-control and refrained, mostly. There were a few times lines slipped out, and I found myself whispering, “Walk this way.”, “There wolf. There castle.” and, “Put the candle back!” at the appropriate times throughout the film.

Monsters, brains, henchmen, and laugh after laugh; all in all, it was a truly grand Halloween.

Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: What hump, Young Frankenstein, and put za candle back.

Copyright © 2012 Richard Timothy