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Young Frankenstein: 12 Behind the Scenes Stories of How Mel Brooks’ Monster Hit Came Alive

Published by
Tim Molloy

Young Frankenstein Used the Original Frankenstein Lab Equipment

(L-R) Teri Garr, Peter Boyle, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Mel Brooks in a publicity still for Young Frankenstein. 20th Century Fox

Brooks wrote that Young Frankenstein production designer Dale Hennessey, fresh off of 1971’s Dirty Harry, built an incredible Frankenstein’s castle set that “looked like it was made of sweating stone, like it was in the mountains where a mist had settled on the surface, leaving it all wet.” It was 15,000 square feet and 35 feet high, occupying Fox’s enormous Stage Five.

The production filled it with laboratory equipment from the original 1931 Frankenstein, which that fim’s brilliant designer Kenneth Strickfalden, who was in his 70s, had kept stored in his Santa Monica garage. “These were the contraptions that made the scary lightning zaps and conferred the entire set with a pulsating eerie glow.”

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Tim Molloy

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