Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn
Have I Seen It Before: Yes? I’m pretty sure I have. I never liked it as much as Young Frankenstein (1974). Westerns were never central to me, and it always seemed like my father liked it a bit too much, if you know what I mean. That hardly covers the times when other family members would try to parenthetically try to quote the film and ruin Johnny Carino’s for everyone.
Maybe I only saw it on cable…
Did I Like It: The prospect of watching the movie with an audience in the year of our Lord 2024 presents are certain amount of dread, and yet I serve at the altar of the cinema. Indeed, the crowd was at least somewhat made up of people who bemoan that such a movie could never be made today, like an infant who wants to watch cartoons right now.
They all laughed a little too loud at the wrong spots—again, if you catch my meaning—but the mythology around the film makes it seem like those people are the ones who really appreciate the film, but the truth is that the film is making fun of them—nay, mocking them mercilessly—and they don’t know any better. The comedy isn’t in the idea of a black sheriff (Little, a paragon of perfectly calibrated charisma) coming to defend the town, it’s in the townspeople who would rather be terrorized by the goons at the employ of Hedley Lamar (Harvey Korman) than have a sheriff. Bart is—sometimes literally; I’m not sure what movie the rest of you are watching—Bugs Bunny, harnessing chaos from rubes to semi-heroic ends.
Speaking of chaos and the essential Bugs-ness of the proceedings… The final minutes of the film are undeniably the most enjoyable section of the film is when things completely fall apart and the movie is a real problem for the safety and security of the Warner Bros. lot. You can say a lot about Warners, but there really aren’t any studios that are willing to let filmmakers mock them while on their dime. The few that do experiment in the idea are just mimicking the shield.