If you grew up in the late seventies or early eighties, chances are you saw Mel Brooks’ classic comedy Young Frankenstein starring co-writer Gene Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Marty Feldman as Igor and Peter Boyle as the Monster. The film is generally, and rightfully, considered Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein’s only competition as the funniest horror spoof ever made. Despite the fact that the lesser-known, lower-budget, low profile, and lower quality horror spoof Frankenstein General Hospital, was made in this era as well (1988), it’s highly improbable you’ve seen that one unless you’re somebody like me who can only read so much about a picture with Frankenstein in the title before you have to track down a VHS copy on ebay and watch the damn thing. And very oddly, as terrible as this bizarre production is, I can’t say I regretted that decision in 2000. You see, Frankenstein General Hospital, a sort of Night Court-esque version of Young Frankenstein, brings to mind the old expression about train wrecks: You don’t want to stare but you can’t look away.

It begins with an opening narration from hero Dr. Bob Frankenstein (played by comedian Mark Blankfield, an unfortunate case of a very funny, very underrated comic actor who always picks the wrong parts), aka Dr. Bob Frankenheimer to give him the name he goes by at the hospital, explaining that his laboratory in the basement of Los Angeles General Hospital is in black and white because his device the “Voltometer” has drained all the color out of the lab. I have to give the hacks who made this picture some credit, naming Dr. Frankenstein “Bob” as if he were a regular doctor and having the laboratory in black and white were pretty clever, although that’s basically where the cleverness ends. Bob is the great-great grandson of Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Incidentally, Victor is depicted by a photo of the very first Dr. Frankenstein on film, actor Colin Clive which is a nice touch) and emulating his ancestor’s famous experiment in the basement of this hospital where he is known as intern Dr. Bob Frankenheimer. His assistant is Iggy, a former short-order cook who is not your typical hunchback. What I mean by that is he’s merely a very, very short man who walks hunched over occasionally whenever he puts on these tight suspenders.  Actor Leslie Jordan looks like he should parody Dwight Frye quite well but unfortunately, despite having somewhat of a liking for him when I first saw the film nine years ago, upon watching it again, he is not very good and hearing him refer to Bob as “Master” with his heavy Southern accent just doesn’t seem right to me. And just for the record, one of Iggy’s many mistakes in the film is to secure the Monster two left feet. I guess this was the screenwriters’ way of explaining why the Monster always has such a stiff walk.

I have to take a minute to talk about the leading man Mark Blankfield, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Gene Wilder, and since these people claimed in the credits that this film was based on Mary Shelley’s novel and it would have been far more honest if the credits read: Based Upon The Screenplay Young Frankenstein by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, I doubt very seriously that this is a coincidence. He also acts like Wilder. However, I have seen this man be funny on TV guest spots, old variety shows and ironically in a few of the more recent Mel Brooks films. He’s not very funny here but most of the actors seem to be aware of how unfunny and lacking in ambition this production is and as a result, seem to be walking through it. A lot of critics trash the stuff he stars in and seem to imply it’s his fault. It’s not his fault – He’s a very funny man who never got the credit he deserved and I’m sure he had bills to pay when he took this role as do we all.

Anyhow, most of the gags deal with how ineptly run the hospital is. 1988 being one of the years of the Ronald Reagan era, the doctors, who have names such as Dr. Who (played by Ben Stein), Dr. Hoover, who performs liposuctions and gets rich and wears a vacuum cleaner around his neck, etc., are money-hungry and sex-starved nitwits. The latter provides some flat humor as a nymphomaniac Nurse played by Katie Caple seduces doctors on the elevator (because doctors make her hot, she keeps half-a-dozen condoms in her shoe, hah-hah-hah) and the hospital psychiatrist, Dr. Alice Singleton (played by Playboy’s Playmate of the Year 1986 Kathy Shower, who wasn’t really a good actress but obviously wasn’t chosen for that) who plays sadistic sexual games with her patients and the hospital head, Dr. Frank Reutger (Jonathan Farwell). After all these gags about sex in the hospital and greed are out of the way, Bob’s Monster (played by brutish looking actor Irwin Keyes, who, like Blankfield, is underrated and talented and could have been far better in the film if given the opportunity) finally enters the picture.

This was one of several problems I had with the movie. For starters, the typical humor in the movie involves the three bad guy doctors, who are bad because Bob stole one of their experiments for a hospital grant, Bob’s been killing one of their patients and because of all the patients who are dying for Bob’s body parts for his Monster, just for the record—i.e. the “bad guys” aren’t as bad as you’d expect them to be--, being in the office and Dr. Reutger’s secretary telling him over the speaker, “Drs. Dixon and Saperstein are here to see you, doctor.” And Reutger replying, “I know, Elizabeth, they’re both in my office.” And an elderly patient who is consistently lying on a gurney and vying hopelessly for a doctor’s attention, because nothing spells comedy like a gravelly ill old man who doesn’t get the medical attention he so desperately needs. As well as a variation of the Frau Blucher gag in Young Frankenstein where whenever Bob refers to his “Secret Experiment”, the characters in the scene hear maniacal laughter in the background. This is all part of the problem: Hospitals aren’t portrayed in comedies very often because the bottom line is they aren’t very funny at all. Case in point: In one scene, Bob confers with Alice in the doctor’s lounge which is revealed in the interior as a strip bar where Bob orders whiskey and water. This gag is not funny because you keep thinking how scary it would be to be operated on in this hospital in real life taking into consideration that they have a bar right in the premises. Similar thoughts often prevail over many gags in the film.   

In addition, the plot of any Frankenstein film, parody or not, should revolve around Dr. Frankenstein creating his Monster, and in this movie, although the Monster is given some good screen time by the third act, his presence as well as his very creation seems like an afterthought. Although the variation on the assistant stealing the wrong brain, stealing the brain of a dead teenager who appears to be a genius and passing over one who looks like a hood, although they’re revealed to be opposites of what he thought in the next scene, is kind of cute but the Monster never really acts the way you’d expect him to. These filmmakers’ idea of having him be menacing is visiting a little blind girl (a combination of two very important scenes in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein respectively, both of which were parodied much more successfully by Wilder and Brooks fourteen years previously), visiting an old lady, and stealing a patient’s leather outfit, skateboard and boombox. In addition, all the makeup people did to Keyes was slap a fake scar on his cheek and some greasepaint on his face. He doesn’t look like a Monster, just a brutish mortal man, which is a shame because just like Blankfield as the doctor, if given the chance to play the Monster in a more ambitious production Keyes could have been excellent as the creature. Even though Peter Boyle’s Monster never really murdered anyone himself, he still played the Monster properly.

Speaking of Boyle, fans of his film will recall the end which I will not give away for people who haven’t seen Young Frankenstein (it’s on Blu Ray and DVD, what are you waiting for?) But I will say that this movie has almost the same ending except it’s much more confusing because it happens when he accidentally drinks a serum Bob stole from his rival Dr. Andrew Dixon (Hamilton Mitchell, who is awful). What does this serum do? Well, it’s intended for the aforementioned old lady the Monster visits, but would it have turned the old lady into a stunning young beauty? I don’t know, they never explain it, even though they show what it does to the Monster and I can’t give that away because if I did, it would also give away what happened to Peter Boyle’s Monster. If Dixon had a scene where he explained to someone precisely what his serum did, it would have helped a lot.

Ironically, though the screenwriters Robert Deel and Michael Kelly obviously intended for Bob to be their Frederick Frankenstein, the two Frankenstein descendants are as different as night and day. Freddy Frankenstein was a sympathetic character because he didn’t want to get involved with the family curse at first but by the time he actually did, he meant well, intending to clear his family’s name by doing it the right way this time. It just didn’t work out how he’d hoped, and he developed a fatherly love for his creation. Bob Frankenstein, on the other hand, is a snide man who steals and blackmails and is cruel to his loyal assistant and is all too anxious to not clear his family’s name, but prove he’s hot stuff as a doctor by making his creature. Though he too develops a fatherly love for his own creation, it feels just as tacked on as the Monster and is entirely unconvincing.

Something else that is entirely unconvincing is the final swordfight between Bob and Dr. Reutger when the latter uncovers the Monster has been making out with his woman behind his back. The VHS box (which gives away the entire plot of the film) describes this swordfight as “wild” but it would have been far more truthful to call it pathetic. Bob takes Alice’s whip (don’t ask) to use against Reutger’s samurai sword, which obviously makes short work of the whip so Bob chooses to defend himself again with a hospital IV poll! Pure genius… Or maybe not.

Overall, this movie feels like it was written in two days and filmed in under a month, both of which are probably true. Obviously none of the care that Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks or anyone else involved with the film this movie rips off put into their production was put into this. The director, Deborah Roberts, did not even use her real name, which I will not reveal because for all I know she cheerfully denies having anything to do with this movie. When discussing it with Joe Randazzo at one point, he had mentioned to me he didn’t think they were trying to make a good movie they were just trying to make a quick buck by ripping off a far superior horror spoof. I had never thought of it like that but he’s absolutely right. Looking at it from that perspective, you see how low on ambition the production really is.

Not many people seem to agree with this but I would have liked to have seen how this would have turned out if it had been a straight horror film with some more competent filmmakers, and possibly with Mark Blankfield and Irwin Keyes in tact, that way you wouldn’t have to worry about having to laugh at a subject (a hospital) that isn’t funny. As it is, however, the only way I can recommend it is either get a bunch of friends and a six pack on a rainy Friday night or watch this first and after you feel let down, then pop in the DVD of Young Frankenstein to cheer yourself up.