Blazing Saddles

Corrupt Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman, hysterical) needs to clear out the Old West town of Rock Ridge in order for the railroad to pass through and schemes the best way to achieve this is to name a black prisoner (Cleavon Little), currently awaiting hanging for uppityness, as sheriff. Facing the expected hostility, Sheriff Bart teams up with a drunken sharpshooter (Gene Wilder) and uses his wit to win over the townspeople and battle the evil Lamarr and his treacherous forces.  Blazing Saddles is one of the funniest (and most disorganized) of Mel Brooks' great, early comedies, with a colorful script (which Richard Pryor contributed to) that probably only Brooks could get approved, and the fortunate presence of Little and Wilder whose roles went through a rocky casting history.

*** 1/2 out of ****

To Be or Not to Be

A acting ham and his Warsaw troupe become embroiled in a treacherous and complicated espionage plot when the Nazis invade Poland and it becomes apparent that their resistance leader is collaborating with the enemy. Mel Brooks's remake of To Be or Not to Be follows Ernst Lubitsch's exceptional classic very closely while mining familiar territory for laughs but is still a very funny film thanks to an earnest sense of humor and a spirited cast (with Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, and Christopher Lloyd standing out) even if its serious scenes don't really work.

*** out of ****

The Twelve Chairs

On her deathbed, an old Russian woman reveals to both her son-in-law (Ron Moody) and her priest (Dom DeLuise) that she has sewn a small fortune of jewels into the seat of one chair of a twelve piece set which, as luck would have it, has been dispersed across a vast expanse of the empire. Working against the priest, the son-in-law, a hapless nobleman, is joined by a shifty con artist (Frank Langella) on his wild goose chase. The Twelve Chairs is an often humorous and occasionally meandering early film from Mel Brooks who adapted, of all things, a 1928 Russian novel. The film features hilarious performances from DeLuise and especially Moody.

Silent Movie

A has been director (Mel Brooks) and his loyal assistants (Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman) devise the perfect plan to put his name back on the marquee: a silent picture, the first one in decades. Although hesitant, the studio head (Brooks' mentor Sid Caesar) agrees only if he can procure nothing less than the industry's biggest stars including Burt Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, James Caan, Anne Bancroft, and Paul Newman. Here Brooks takes on the admirable charge of crafting a completely silent movie (with one famous, ironical exception) and does so mostly with wit and impressive craft. Like many of his movies, some of the gags go on for too long and many miss the mark, but for the most part Silent Movie is an irreverent good time.

High Anxiety

Following the suspicious death of its prior director, distinguished psychiatrist Dr. Richard Thorndyke (Mel Brooks) takes up his mantle at the Institute for the Very, Very, Nervous and quickly notices that things there are a little off. Soon he finds himself way in over his head, having been chased by hordes of birds, attacked in the shower, and wrongly implicated for murder.  Brooks' High Anxiety is a silly spoof and homage to Alfred Hitchcock, which the Master of Suspense was reputed to have enjoyed. Many of the gags fall flat (a shower scene where Brooks is stabbed with a rolled-up newspaper is a particular dud) with the only really funny bits coming from Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, and Madeline Kahn who are essentially reprising their roles in previous Brooks' films.

Mel Brooks: Make a Noise

From the day his cabbie uncle took him to see Anything Goes on Broadway, nine-year-old Melvin Kaminsky knew he was going to make it in show business, and that was that. Changing his name to Brooks, he set out with an almost obnoxious ferocity and unremitting humor on a career that has now spanned over seven decades. From writing on television for Sid Caesar, making immensely popular comedy albums with Carl Reiner, creating the TV series Get Smart, marrying and often collaborating with Anne Bancroft, his life's love, writing and directing classic, groundbreaking comedies (and some that weren't so hot), becoming a Hollywood player funding major projects for young directors such as David Lynch and David Cronenberg,  and reinventing himself in the theater with The Producers, he has more than followed through on his boyhood certainty. Although any documentary that features an interview with the comedy legend and many clips from his films is guaranteed to contain more than a handful of laughs, Robert Trachtenberg's Mel Brooks: Make a Noise barely scratches the surface, divulging surprisingly few details of his work and personal life.

Young Frankenstein

Still living down the horrific reputation of his grandfather, Dr. Frankenstein (It's Frahnkensteen!) lectures at the medical college, until he inherits the family castle. Upon moving in with his tititlating assistant (Teri Garr) and hunchbacked and bug-eyed assistant Igor (Marty Feldman), the good doctor denies interest in his grandfather's work, until being lured in by the sinister Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman) and thus continuing the cycle of madness. "Young Frankenstein" is not only one of Mel Brooks' funniest films, but it is also an excellent cinematic achievement, that stands alongside any modern usage of black and white, not to mention visually with any of the James Whale "Frankenstein' classics of the 1930s (Brooks must have thoroughly studied those films, and even used some of the same equipment used in the laboratory scenes). Cowritten with star Gene Wilder, the film contains many memorable and riotous sequences including Feldman replacing his head with a specimen for a goof, the monster's (Peter Boyle) visit to a hermit (Gene Hackman) to the woods, and a rendition of 'Puttin' on the Ritz' sung by master and creator. Gene Wilder brings his incomparable energy and comic sensibilities to the title role, and he is surrounded by an impeccable cast, also at the top of their comic form. It could be argued that Brooks peaked with this film, the end of an unprecedented run of some of the cinema's most hilarious offerings (The Producers , Blazing Saddles). Though he would have a few minor successes following, "Young Frankenstein" represents Brooks at the top of his game as both a comic and a filmmaker.

The Producers

Having once reached the pinnacle of Broadway success, producer Max Bialystock now funds his disastrous plays by giving little old ladies one last thrill before the cemetery. When Leo Bloom, a meek and nervous accountant, drops by to do his books, he hypothesizes that if one were to oversell a production, more money could be made off of a flop then a hit. From then on, the partnership of Bialystock and Bloom  is forged and the duo sets out to stage the worst musical in the history of Broadway. Mel Brooks' debut film "The Producers" is a movie so hysterically funny that I was cracking up just reading over the plot synopsis. Brooks' wry and outlandish film is an unrelenting comic romp, from a script that won him the Original Screenplay Oscar. As the rotund and depraved Bialystock, Zero Mostel is an inimitable ball of comic energy and the equally incomparable Gene Wilder is just as wonderful as the manic and inconsolable Bloom. After the uproarious opening scenes between Mostel and Wilder, the subsequent ones showcase several hilarious performances as the duo assembles their colossal bomb: Kenneth Mars as the demented Hitler loyalist and playwright. Christopher Hewett as the cross dressing world's worst director who holds the opposite opinion of himself. Lee Meredith as the curvy Swedish secretary. Dick Shawn as the drugged out leading man. Brooks took his film to Broadway many years later and found smashing success, and having watched the movie where Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprised their stage roles, I found this to be the equivalent of someone remaking Citizen Kane. Not that Lane and Broderick weren't up to the task, and Brooks' script wasn't as fresh as always, but the hilarity of the original and the manic chemistry between Mostel and Wilder can never be replicated.