Main Cast: Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Dom DeLuise, Jonathan Pryce, Paul L. Smith
Release Year: 1986
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Gene Wilder directed and wrote (along with Terence Marsh) this mild farce which is a pale reminder of Wilder's glory days in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Wilder plays ham radio actor Larry Abbot, who takes his fiancee Vickie Pearle (Gilda Radner) out to meet his relations on a gloomy country estate before they are married. The creepy clan is lorded over by the bizarre Aunt Kate (Dom DeLuise), who keeps babbling about a local rampaging werewolf. As Larry and Vickie try to spend a quiet weekend in the mansion, they are assaulted with all manners of spooky goings-on -- the kind of routines that were already growing whiskers when Abbott and Costello first dusted them off over fifty years ago. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Peter Vaughan - Francis Abbot Sr.; Bryan Pringle - Pfister; Roger Ashton-Griffiths - Francis, Jr.; Jim Carter - Montego; Eve Ferret - Sylvia; Julann Griffin - Nora Abbot; Jo Ross - Susan; Ann Way - Rachel; Bill Bailey - The Host; R.J. Bell - Cop; Colin Bruce - Photographer; Francis Drake - Reporter; Don Fellows - Producer; David Healy - P.R. Man; Lou Hirsch - Sponsor; William Hootkins - Reporter; Will Keaton - Werewolf; Mac McDonald - Reporter; Billy Mitchell - Cop; Christopher Muncke - Announcer; Ed Wiley - Engineer; Matt Zimmerman - 1st Radio Actor; John Bloomfield - Photographer; Andrea Browne - Prodution Assistant; Alastair Haley - Little Larry; Sally Osborn - Larry's Mother; Barbara Rosenblat - Reporter; Andy Ross - Conductor; Scampi - Toby the Dog; Howard Swinson - Eddy, SFX Man; Don Morgan - Orchestra
Credit
Alan Tomkins - Art Director, Basil Rayburn - Associate Producer, Irene Lamb - Casting, Graciela Daniele - Choreography, Ruth Myers - Costume Designer, Gene Wilder - Director, Christopher Greenbury - Editor, John Morris - Composer (Music Score), Stuart Freeborn - Makeup, Terence Marsh - Production Designer, Fred Schuler - Cinematographer, Susan Ruskin - Producer, Michael Seirton - Set Designer, Ian Scoones - Special Effects, John Stears - Special Effects, Tracey Eddon - Stunts, Colin Skeaping - Stunts, Bill Weston - Stunts, Wayne Michaels - Stunts, Terence Marsh - Screenwriter, Gene Wilder - Screenwriter
Larry Abbot (Wilder) and Vickie Pearle (Radner) are radio stars in the Manhattan Mystery Theater who decide to get married. Larry has been plagued with on-air panic attacks and speech impediments lately since he proposed to Vickie. Vickie thinks it's just pre-wedding jitters, but his affliction could get them both fired. Larry's uncle, Dr. Paul Abbot, decides that Larry needs to be cured of his neurotic speech defect and exaggerated panic attacks. Paul decides to treat him with a form of shock therapy to "scare him to death" in much the same way someone might try to startle someone out of hiccups. Larry chooses the castle-like mansion located in rural upstate New York in which he grew up as the site for their wedding. There, Vickie gets to meet Larry's eccentric family.
The head of the family is Great-Aunt Kate (Deluise), who plans to leave all her money to Larry. Larry's cousins are Charles, Nora, Susan, cross-dressing Francis Jr. , Uncle Francis Sr., and the estate's butler Pfister and his wife Rachel. Joining them is Sylvia, Larry's old girlfriend who is dating Charles, and Montego the Magnificent, Susan's magician husband. Paul decides this is the perfect opportunity to set his plan to "cure" Larry in motion and he gets the other family members in on the plan. Unfortunately for all of them, something else more sinister and unexpected is lurking at the Abbot Estates. The pre-wedding party becomes a real life version of Larry and Vickie's radio murder mysteries.
