MOVIE REVIEW: Transylvania 6–5000 (1985)
Before bootleg YouTube vids and free streaming sites, only earlier generations will remember not having to hunt down a home video copy of the latest film out in theaters; you just waited because all the movies came to you on UHF broadcast TV a few years later for free. Democratized popular movie review and criticism was not as big back then, so it was always a surprise if the movie be good or bad. The surprise was the best part! So imagine seeing the Universal Pictures monsters — Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Dracula, the Mummy — as well as mad scientists, frightened Transylvanian villagers, and even a hunchbacked servant…in a comedy? Not since Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein was such an achievement tried, but I can plainly say this is no Mel Brooks film. This film is its own thing, directed by an associate of Mel Brooks, having planted itself in my childhood memory and featuring the stars of tomorrow while having the most peculiar name.
Jack (Jeff Goldblum, Independence Day: Resurgence, Thor: Ragnarok, Jurassic Park) is a writer who wants to write hard-hitting, ethical journalism. Unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills, so he has to room with his friend Gil (Ed Begley Jr., Batman Forever, Amazon Women on the Moon, “St. Elsewhere” [TV-NBC]) and work at a supermarket tabloid newspaper run by Gil’s dad (Norman Fell, “Three’s Company” [TV-ABC], Airport 1975). The elder man gets a lead on a fantastical story: Frankenstein’s monster is causing trouble in Transylvania, and he assigns both Jack and Gil to go over there and investigate for the paper. Though the old man is paying all expenses for a 2-week stay in Eastern Europe, his ultimatum to the young men is simple: come back with something or they’re fired.
After many planes, trains & buses, our protagonists cross the Carpathian Mountains to arrive in the real “Transylvania” — a town centered in the middle of a modernized Romania. While Jack is immediately smitten with another tourist Elizabeth (Teresa Ganzel, The Toy, “The Duck Factory” [TV-NBC]), there are no stranger things going on, despite Gil immediately making an ass out of himself in front of the locals who immediately mock him for asking about the fictional Frankenstein’s monster. Thankfully, the mayor Lepescu (Jeffrey Jones, Stay Tuned, Howard the Duck, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), takes pity on them and leads them to the castle where they’re staying — he is the hotel manager there, after all. More strange characters start showing up:
- Fejos (Michael Richards, Problem Child, “Seinfeld” [TV-NBC], “Fridays” [TV-ABC], UHF), the weird overgrown oaf who aspires to be a comedian
- Radu the hunchback (John Byner, “Bizarre” [TV-CTV], “Soap” [TV-ABC]; does both voices in “The Ant and the Aardvark” animated skits) and his wife Lupi (Carol Kane, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” [TV-Paramount+], The Princess Bride, “Taxi” [TV-ABC]), house servants who are a little over-excited to play the role of depraved hunchbacks and default to calling people “master”
- Odette (Geena Davis, Thelma & Louise, Stuart Little, Beetlejuice) is a raging nymphomaniac that claims to be a vampire
- Lawrence Malbot (Rudy de Luca, this film’s writer and director, History of the World part I, Spaceballs) is accused of being a werewolf.
All these weird characters showing up have a relationship to one particular person: Dr. Malavaqua (Joseph Bologna, Big Daddy, “Rags to Riches” [TV-NBC]), a man rumored to be a mad scientist who creates monsters in the castle’s secret lab to terrorize the town in the castle’s shadow! Dr. Malavaqua couldn’t do that because mayor Lepescu says he’s been locked away in the local sanitarium for the better part of a decade. It’s up to Jack and Gil to evade the local police Inspector Percek (Božidar Smiljanić, Armor of God [1986], The Peacemaker) to get to the bottom of the story…before the story gets them!
<<SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT>>
Watching this movie again was a delight, and with adult eyes it was even funnier. I finally understood what kind of medicine Malavaqua practiced: he was multi-disciplinary, with expertise in chiropractic medicine, plastic surgery, and aesthetics. For him to bring all these disparate people into his castle, to work on them and give them better lives through better looks is amazing. I also found it funny that he only becomes a mad scientist within the physical boundaries of his secret lab. In hindsight, I can imagine if people still had hang-ups about plastic surgery and hounded him for doing things “against nature” (i.e., making ugly people pretty, using electrolysis on the overly hairy, eliminating hunched backs, etc.), it might make you crazy and give you a split personality, too.
The comic timing in this film screams Mel Brooks, down to the behavior and small sounds between Radu and Lupi. It was a fun surprise when Fejos uses a fake limb to get a gag laugh, but the 2nd time it’s his own leg — which always throws me! If there’s any problem in this movie, it’s that the movie is horribly dated. The whole thing reads like an updated version of Abbot & Costello Meets Frankenstein, but our principal characters are more attractive and the monster’s aren't nearly as horrific. You’ll get your laughs, but later generations may recognize it comes at the expense at the differently abled…because this movie is 80’s-style PG.
CHOICE CUTS:
- The movie’s title is a play on old-timey phone numbers, which started with the name of where you wanted to call and localized number. The popular swing jazz song “Pennsylvania 6–5000” by the Glenn Miller Orchestra started this title’s history, becoming “Transylvania 6–5000” for an animated Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones about Bugs Bunny’s encounter with spooky monsters in Transylvania. Fitting, as much of the movie does play out like a cartoon.
- A variant of Pennsylvania 6–5000 is played every time the phone rings at the hotel and in the end credits of this movie, with a vocal element calling out the movie title’s name.
- Reading about how Geena Davis felt left out in school because she was too tall had me laughing because she’s smoking HOTT in this movie. Granted, she’s wearing one of the sexiest vampire costume I’ve ever seen, but everything else that comes after this proves my point.
- This is yet another movie Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum star in together, with The Fly (1986) and Earth Girls are Easy (1988) on the list. Small wonder they were briefly married; they kept having meet-cutes at work for years straight.
- Ed Begley proved how capable of a comic actor he is, falling back on his weird physical comedy I first saw on 1987’s Amazon Women on the Moon.
- FUN FACT: The Frankenstein’s monster is called Hunyadi (stunt actor Petar Buntic, Gymkata, The Pope Must Diet), and only shows up for a small part in the second act, and the majority of the third act.
- FUN FACT: The actor that plays Lawrence Malbot Jr. — the actual Wolf Man in this picture — is played by character actor Donald Gibb (Revenge of the Nerds, Bloodsport).
- Is it just me, or did they get Carol Kane’s spooky makeup, hair and maid outfit to look more like a goth Madonna costume?
- The gag about the tabloid being sensationalized to the point of changing a title from “rope factory” to “rape factory” for readers was gross — especially when the old man explains it was “just a typo”. Such a mindset truly sells the point about how much he loves crap.
- Breaking into and out of the sanitorium was some of the best comedy I’ve seen, taking advantage of the guards’ single-minded determination.
- The headlines at the end were amazing; “DOCTOR PERFORMS VASECTOMY ON HIMSELF” and “VAMPIRE SUCKS TOWN DRY” are stand-outs in the list.
- PRICELESS QUOTE: “Knockers! I never counted on knockers! I’m so content!” — The Mummy (Ksenia Prohaska, Visitors From the Arkana Galaxy, “SeaQuest 2032” [TV-NBC]), upon learning her plastic surgery was successful.
- This film was shot partially on location in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — the country whose split in the 1990s caused the Yugoslav Wars (also known by its component conflicts as the Kosovo War, the Bosnian War, and others).
