Blazing Saddles
| Year: | 1974 |
| Director: | Mel Brooks |
| Writer: | Mel Brooks |
| Cast: | Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens, Mel Brooks |
What else can be said about this undisputed classic? Mel Brooks was the king of American comedy throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, his style more overt than the likes of Woody Allen and closer in tone to the movement that would give rise to the extreme gag comedy of the Zucker brothers.
Various subtexts can be read into it, not the least of which is middle America's entrenched racism, but mostly it's the highly comic tale of a deep south slave (Little) appointed sheriff of a small town full of small minded peasants in a political move to bring them undone, instead rallying them to unprecedented greatness.
Also Brooks' parody of Westerns, most obviously evident when the sprawling fight scene bursts out of the Hollywood sound stage into the surrounding backlot.
Full of all Brooks favourite fixtures (Deluise, Kahn, Korman, Wilder) as many classic lines as the best of Monty Python or Flying High, it's eternally quotable, sometimes lowbrow, but never forgettable.
Various subtexts can be read into it, not the least of which is middle America's entrenched racism, but mostly it's the highly comic tale of a deep south slave (Little) appointed sheriff of a small town full of small minded peasants in a political move to bring them undone, instead rallying them to unprecedented greatness.
Also Brooks' parody of Westerns, most obviously evident when the sprawling fight scene bursts out of the Hollywood sound stage into the surrounding backlot.
Full of all Brooks favourite fixtures (Deluise, Kahn, Korman, Wilder) as many classic lines as the best of Monty Python or Flying High, it's eternally quotable, sometimes lowbrow, but never forgettable.