"A LUMINOUS AFTERNOON in the black-and-white forest. The monster, played by Boris Karloff, pauses as he hears the sweet notes of a violin. His face lights, he lumbers through the woods, following the sound. He comes to a cosy cottage among the trees, very gingerbread. Inside, the violin is being played by a blind hermit, who is being played by O.P. Heggie. The monster approaches, and pounds on the door."

~ from Jimmy the Kid, by Donald E. Westlake.

Well, since we just had Otto Preminger Week, seems like a good idea to name-check that other O.P., surname Heggie.

(Actually, Westlake conflates two scenes: the daylight forest above, and the hermit encounter which happens at dusk.)

The parody of the blind hermit scene in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, with an exuberant Gene Hackman in the Heggie role, is so very fine it almost ruins the original. But Mel Brooks clearly loves the James Whale movies he's satirising, so there's no real damage done. It may be a difficulty of the parody genre -- if the filmmaker doesn't love what s/he's mocking, the spoof rarely hits the right notes. If they do love it, the parody won't have bite. In Brooks' case he's not out to destroy the original, he's just riffing on it, and so we end up with a pleasing comedy version of '30s Universal horror, rather than any kind of deconstruction of it. Whereas BLAZING SADDLES attacks the ailing western the way Gary Cooper attacks Jack Lord in MAN OF THE WEST, not only delivering a punitive beating, but tearing the pants off it as well.