A Classic Case of Transference

Everything gets a little scrambled at the end of Young Frankenstein, especially brains. In order for the Doctor to right the wrongs, he has to put a little bit of himself into the monster. So he rigs up a transfer device in the lab, and hooks himself up to it along with the monster.

Unfortunately, the village mob strikes at exactly the wrong time, and almost ruins the whole thing. Before they can destroy the lab, though, the monster speaks And not his usual hgghgghhhhaaargh noise, either, but a fully formed sentence: "Put that man down!" And the villagers put the doctor down immediately because you do what 7-foot giants tell you to do.

By giving the monster the gift of speech, the Doctor's experiment is finally complete. That's what was wrong this whole time; the monster was frustrated that he couldn't talk, so he resorted to violence. It was a simple failure to communicate. With the monster all civilized, the mob's called off. And now that he's domesticated, he can marry Elizabeth. Our last shot of him is in bed reading the Wall Street Journal, like all civilized monsters do.

That leaves the Doctor, who's fine despite the transfer being interrupted, free to marry Inga, whom he liked more than Elizabeth anyway. On their wedding night, though, Inga has a question: "You know in the transference part the monster got part of your wonderful brain. But what did you ever get from him?" From the way he reacts, we think it's probably the schwanstucker.

Woof.