Ed Begley Jr.

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) Silly by design, Transylvania 6–5000 is another attempt to put some comedy into typical horror tropes. Don’t expect anything close to Young Frankenstein, obviously — this is much dumber fare, and it’s scattershot enough to aim at the entire stable of Universal monsters rather than just one target. The humour doesn’t fly high: in fact, it’s probably more accurate to say that the film is more amusing (in a somewhat undisciplined, juvenile way) than actually funny. Still, writer-director Rudy De Luca gets a few chuckles. The title of the film alludes to a song that shows up as a phone ring, and a few of the exchanges are funny. But perhaps the most impressive thing about Transylvania 6–5000 is the cast, which bats far above that kind of film: Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr. in the two lead roles, plus Geena Davis as a sex-crazed vampire (in a PG-rated film, alas) with such notables as Jeff Jones and Michael Richards in smaller roles. All of them somewhat pre-celebrity, but all of them paid (as the film’s production history goes) by Dow Chemical Yugoslavian currency that they were unable to repatriate directly, and so paid for a film co-production. It’s a weird production history for a middling kind of comedy. I liked it mildly, but I can certainly understand if Transylvania 6–5000 strikes others as unbearable.