There is a long history of music videos commenting on the history of film. Welcome to the Jungle and Dancing on the Ceiling come to mind. There is a long history of genre music videos. The Blackeyed Peas and Janelle Monae play there. There is a long history of genre music videos commenting on the history of film, like Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight Tonight fits that perfectly. The Italian music video Matti Like, a wonderful video that played at Cinequest in 2026, is one of the best of all those I’ve seen.
Let me start with the basic idea: it’s been 50 years since Young Frankenstein was released and director/songwriter Federico Cavallini has decided an homage was due. Not only an homage to the original masterpiece, but a fan and funky short film that plays in the music video form. The closest thing I can think of is the Paula Abdul classic Rush, Rush with Keanu Reeves that plays with the Rebel Without a Cause story within the music video form without making the song about it at all.
The thing is that it’s not a shot-for-shot re-make, for one thing it’s only 4 minutes long, and it tells another story within the visual aesthetic that defined Mel Brooks’ genius work, while also nodding the head at the classic Universal Frankenstein in much the same way that Brooks did... mostly. It’s gorgeous, but I tend to think that anything playing in the realm of the classic high-contrast, Expressionist stuff of Arthur Edason deserves positive attention! The look works, and Director of Photography Rui Dias deserves a lot of the credit.
To really make good understanding of a music video, one must find the appreciable portions of both the music and the video. Now, the song is written and performed by Cavallini, who is one of a growing number of musicians also making their own videos (Kate Bush’s Little Shrew played Cinequest this year, for example) and it’s a fun little bop. It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d hear as a mid-pack Eurovision entry from a middle-European country. The song is sweet, but the video is even better.
The idea is pretty much that the Frankenstein that is created (and it is named Frankenstein, just like an astronomer gets to name an asteroid after themselves!) is a woman without the neck bolts or the scars (or the vegetal appearance of Charles Ogle’s first monster in 1910) and she goes on to become an influencer and when the villagers storm the castle, she turns their fear-filled rage into a sweet castle dance party.
Now, let me break this down in a weird way; this is a love story about filmmakers and Mel Brooks.
If you wanted to pay homage to Mel, typically you’d choose Spaceballs or The Producers, but Young Frankenstein is something even more special; it’s Mel’s unseen hand. It is exactly the movie that Mel Brooks could do that exposed his very real love of classic literature (he apparently once wrote a script, very early on, for a Golem picture) and an understanding of the genre film and how its roots mingle with comedy. Don’t believe me? Look at the evolution of humor and genre fiction magazines. They mirror each other, though a big part of that is the general advance of printing technologies. He is tying so many of the moments and characters that populated 1930s genre film and amped them up in an incredibly intelligent way. The greatest example of why it's about the unseen hand is that he's not in it, and it's working in a field where he was not well known. While his hand (and face) is absolutely seen in the comedy science fiction masterpiece Spaceballs, in Young Frankenstein he was working more slyly.
Brooks wasn’t just making a funny science fiction film based on a horror film (that's another debate that needs to be had; remember, there was no Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation to require that debate at the time), but a specific reference to the way that 1930s science fiction worked. The way that he approached the material, and especially the famed Me and My Shadow performance, which was exactly the kind of thing you'd see in 1930s and 40s MGM flicks, is entirely based on one of Mel’s more impressive ideas: that comedy must reflect something back at the viewer. Brooks was not merely reflecting the individual film Frankenstein, but everything from The Island of Lost Souls, The Invisible Man, and Things to Come, and to a lesser degree Laurel and Hardy, the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton and many many more. Brooks got all that, and incorporated the ideas without being showy when paying tribute. Cavallini works with that idea as well. Even when it breaks down into a modern dance party, headphoned DJ groovin' and all, it feels less like responding by presenting a music video dance party, but more like the ones you might have caught a glimpse of in 30s films… or perhaps more like retro-30s comedic things like the ending of The Imposters.
Now, here’s the ultimate question: is it genre?
Well, yes, or I put it in the wrong category at Cinequest. No matter how you slice it, it’s telling a science fiction story. It’s still giving us Frankenstein, just told in reflection of Young Frankenstein which just happens to be in reflection of 1930s genre film and fiction and so on. That is incredibly smart short filmmaking.
While there’s still some festival life in Matti Like, you can actually watch it on Vimeo!
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Chris Garcia - Archivist, curator, festival programmer, and professional wrestling enthusiast. @johnnyeponymous
