Mel Brooks Films

Introduction

Melvin Mel Kaminsky (born June 28, 1926), better known by his stage name Mel Brooks, is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor, and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the Top 20 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing saddles, Young frankenstein, the producers, history of the world part 1 etc.

Discussion

Brooks' first smash hit is a spoof of the movie Western that pushed the comedy envelope back in the mid-1970s. Here Brooks lampoons the hypocrisy of a lily-white town in the Old West when a black man (Cleavon Little in a role originally intended Richard Pryor, who gets a co-writer credit) becomes sheriff. Blazing Saddles still provides a few chuckles, but once you know the big jokes (farting around the campfire, Mongo punching the horse, Lili Von Shtupp, etc.), it doesn't have the same effect. Blazing Saddles is the favorite of many Brooks fans, but I find it somewhat overrated. One interesting tidbit discovered on Brooks' 55-minute audio commentary is that Gig Young was originally cast as the Waco Kid, and filmed for a day, before Young's real-life drunkenness forced Brooks to replace him with Gene Wilder. (Parish, 78)

The plot of "Blazing Saddles", as I eluded to in my review opening, takes place primarily in the fictional old-west town of Rock Ridge, whose residents seemingly all have the same last name and who have been mercilessly besieged by a group of thugs who are lead by a man named Taggart (Slim Pickens, 1919-1983). After the thugs kill the sheriff of Rock Ridge, the residents send an urgent plea to Gov. LePetomaine to immediately appoint a new sheriff. Gov. LePetomaine delegates the appointment to his assistant Hedley Lamarr, whose nefarious secret agenda is the destruction of Rock Ridge to make way for a new railroad line.

With Gene Wilder as his co-writer, Young Frankenstein has a much sharper script than Blazing Saddles. Spoofing the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and smartly photographed in black & White to capture the spirit of those 1930s horror films, Wilder stars as the title character, who pronounces his last name "Fronk-en-steen" because he's ashamed of his grandfather's infamous regeneration experiments. But after accepting an invitation to Transylvania, young Frankenstein resumes his grandfather's experiments. Bug-eyed Marty Feldman steals the show as Igor, who pronounces it "Eye-gor," and Wilder gives an inspired comedic performance. The rendition of Puttin' on the Ritz by Frankenstein and his creature (Peter Boyle) is the most amusing of the musical numbers that always pop up in Brooks' movies. (Stewart, 131)

"Young Frankenstein" is a parody of the classic Universal horror films of the 1930s and focuses around the classic 1931 film "Frankenstein" directed by James Whale that featured ...