In 1974, as aforementioned, Mel Brooks released two comedic masterpieces with his frequent and greatest collaborator Gene Wilder. Both are heartfelt parodies of genres they adore that don’t skimp on either the adventure, the gothicness, or most importantly; the comedy. 

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Wilder has never been funnier than in these two films, highlighting why he was and most likely always will be the king of playing it straight (further proof can be found in the greatest segment of Woody Allen’s comedic farce Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *but were too afraid to ask). Both films are so comedically tight that no frame is spared and no second can’t have another gag put into it. Brooks and his team highlighted with these two films that the best parodies are made by fans, “imitation is the highest form of flattery” after all, and these two imitations are simply marvellous. The first came in the February of that year and the second in the December, with the first release of this all time epic double bill being the post-modernist western Blazing Saddles. When people discuss the great post-modern westerns and the revisionist takes on the genre that of course by the 1970’s despite many incredible highs, had grown quite stale, people I don’t think mention enough that of Brooks sensationally funny and irreverent bad taste take on the racial politics of the era through the guise of a Western sheriff plot. Working with a writing team 5 strong including the talents of Richard Pryor, Alan Uger, Andrew Bergman and Norman Steinberg all bringing to the table a variety of different talents to make the at times collage style and largely sketch based way that Blazing Saddles unfolds never once pinning down a particular brand of humour to use, instead varying scene to scene and sometimes within a scene itself. What makes Saddles timeless, important and entertaining to this day is also the heart of manys arguments surrounding whether a film like this could be made today and to frank I think it’s these sorts of often tedious conversations that move one away from what actually makes this film incredibly successful. This is not a film that punches down nor is it a film that shies away from racial politics of the time of its making or the time it is depicting, instead this is a fervently political film by design that manages to blend the highest of art with the lowest and the most intellectual of comedies with the most bad taste and vulgar. This film uses slurs and depicts with abandum a variety of stereotypes, but that is never where the humour lies. The humour lies with the racists, the bigots and the idiots, the humour lies in deconstructions of tropes rather than the simple juxtaposition of having black actors in positions they weren’t at the time.

The film is centred around Cleavon Little in a role where Little gives so much charisma and so much strength to the character of Bart that he is not only incredibly funny and rootable for but also gives way to the heart at the story, especially when paired here with Wilder who is not only so sincerely funny, but is also so tender as he always is. The concluding lines he delivers in the films actually ring more of Casablanca than broad comedy punchline. Wilder and Little go through the film sketch to sketch and offer a pathos that makes the film as strong as it remains after all these years. But it’s more in Brooks meta vein than Young Frankenstein and certainly in his more broad aesthetic with gags flyer a lot looser and on a lot less of a stringent theme. Targets are everywhere and it’s not just the western genre that is lampooned. Harvey Korman is the devilish villain of the film with his ‘r’s of Rock Ridge forever burned into my brain, along with so many other of his wickedly delivered lines often at the expense of his name Hedley Lamarr and it’s actually find it’s these sorts of jokes that make the film dated, not particularly it’s dealings with race, it’s stuff about the bygone era that modern audiences (beyond freaks like me) will have very little to grasp onto and jokes will fly by. But then on the other hand you have the classic Mel Brooks musical numbers which in this case delivers the films bravura supporting turn and a fine example of where Brook’s referencing of older films can stand alone as it’s hilalrious gag and creation. Here with Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Shtupp, with her transcendent performance of a Brooks original song called I’m Tired, a sendup presumably of Marlene Dietrich in Hitchcock’s Stage Fright. But the song alone is so funny and Kahn’s performance is so on another level that knowing or not knowing the influence can only add instead of subtracting. Overall I would Saddles is mostly a film that one can enjoy with gay abandum whether they have a prior knowledge of westerns of the other films Brooks is aping here, as is the case with the best Brooks spoofs, however there is a core of sincerity and stupidity that makes this yet another perfect gem in the Brooks cannon and of course it goes without saying one of his most famous by far.

- Thomas Carruthers