'Doctor! There's That Strange Music Again! What Could It Be?'

Mel Brooks Thinks It's Time for Frankenstein To Dance

from Reuters

LOS ANGELES - Mel Brooks thinks it is almost time for Frankenstein to sing and dance on Broadway.

The comic filmmaker, who made a monster hit musical out of his 1968 movie The Producers, says he is adapting another of his classic film comedies for the stage - this time the 1974 Young Frankenstein, a spoof on the Frankenstein saga which he says is perhaps the best movie he ever made.

With no deadline set, Brooks says he is in the middle of writing the score, including a song for scary Frau Blucher, the caretaker of the Frankenstein castle still madly in love with that late, unlamented mad scientist.

When the whole musical is completed, Brooks says he will make a formal announcement to raise money.

"It is going to be wonderful," Brooks said in a telephone interview, just before he burst into a German-accented version of his Frau Blucher song:

He vus my boyfriend
He vould come home in a snit
He vould have a terrible fit
I am the first thing he vould hit but I didn't give a shit
He vus my boyfriend.

How could a show like this miss? In fact, you might ask, how can anything that the 79-year-old Mel Brooks writes, directs or stars in miss?

To find out just how much of a national treasure he is, the Mel Brooks DVD collection has just been issued by Twentieth Century Fox Home entertainment, containing eight of his films from Blazing Saddles to Young Frankenstein.

The set contains five films never before issued on DVD, including The Twelve Chairs, a film some critics consider Brooks' neglected masterpiece. "I was damned good in it," Brooks said of his performance as a serf who loves to be beaten by his Russian aristocratic master.

When he made Young Frankenstein in 1974, Brooks said he did everything he could to emulate the 1930s James Whale movie, from shooting the whole film in black and white to using many of the same shoots that Whale did.

Now Brooks says his challenge is to do the musical on Broadway with a black and white set, with all the mists and moodiness of the original movie plus laughs and songs. As he said in one of his movies, "It's good to be the king."