High Anxiety (1977)

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman

Have I Seen it Before: I have the clearest memory of renting it on VHS at some point in the distant past, but I remember very little about it, and retrospectives on Brooks tend not to dwell on it much at all.

That should probably tell both you and me something.

Did I Like It: On paper, this should be one of the better Brooks satires. Like Young Frankenstein (1974) and Blazing Saddles (1974)*, but unlike Spaceballs (1987), he is lampooning a type of film—the Hitchcock thriller—for which he has genuine affection. Additionally, one watches the cast displayed—especially Kahn, who can make a classic out of an otherwise languid comedy—and is comforted that, at minimum, a good time is about to be had.

And yet the film leaves me somewhat cold. There were chuckles to be had, and Brooks dutifully creates a Hitchcock pastiche that is silly enough to accomplish what it set out to do. Maybe it is that the film owes more to Vertigo (1958) than any other film in the Hitchcock library. Had it been more North by Northwest (1959) or Psycho (1960) (and there are certainly bits of both films present), I might be more inclined to get behind the film. There’s also the guilless ambition of Brooks, present in all of his work and only in more recent years came to fruition, to be a creature of Broadway. When Brooks breaks out into song, I somehow doubt that he objected as much as legends has it to the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” number in Frankenstein.

And that may be the real problem, which I alluded to in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975). Come to think of it, these two films might yet be closely related. Most of the ingredients are in both films, but there was something singular in the team up of Brooks and Gene Wilder that inherently diminishes films in which they worked apart.

*No one can take 1974 away from Brooks.

Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996)

Director: Mike Judge

Cast: Mike Judge, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Cloris Leachman

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Did anyone have HBO in the 90s and get around seeing this one? I think my parents might have even seen it at some point.

Did I Like It: I’ve been going through a bit of an MTV-renaissance lately. Well, I suppose it can’t be counted as much of a rebirth, when I never really watched the channel in my youth. And yet, between The Real World Homecoming (a show in which I thought I would never have any interest), my HBOMax hunger strike*, and Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe (2022), I’ve been parking it at Paramount + on the regular, and it more often than not feels like its the late 90s early 2000s all over again.

There’s an odd simplicity to this movie, when compared with its much later progeny. Universe felt the need to wrap the affair in a thoroughly meta plot line. That was probably rightly so, in order to bring the two heroes into the weirdness that is the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. Here, Beavis and Butthead (both Judge) are content to be what they were at their most pure: Two dimwitted and ultimately malevolent sex maniacs, too stupid to realize they never need to go on the journey insisted on by the road movie int which they have drifted.

That may feel like a complaint, but it isn’t. This is as pure a delivery system for Beavis and Butthead as one is likely to find. The only way to amplify this movie’s primary quality would be to stop the proceedings in the middle to be an unrelated concert film complete with running commentary. That might have worked less as a feature, but I would direct the reader to Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996). It could have worked. We would have watched anything that year.

*They know what they did. Odds are you do, too.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman

Have I Seen it Before: Indeed. It was the movie my wife and I had watched on our first date, although I had seen it several times before then. To the best of my memory, I don’t think I’ve watched it since then.

Which is so weird I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.

Did I Like It: I’m not even sure where to begin this review. This is by far the best movie Mel Brooks ever made. I’ve never been able to get over myself long enough to get into Blazing Saddles (1974)*, and while you might think I would be a devotee of Spaceballs (1987), but I’m not. Brooks’ swing for the sci-fi has two major problems in my mind. First, there’s never a moment of the film that doesn’t groan from the fact that it was clearly made in the `80s. Second, I never once get the sense that Brooks is terribly fond of any science fiction movie. Thus, the spoofing never rises above a joke factory, and Spaceballs never becomes a legitimate science fiction movie in any measurable way. All of Brooks’ films are funny**, only a few of them are special.

It might seem like I am spending an inordinate amount of time in my Young Frankenstein review talking about how much I don’t like Spaceballs, but the contrast is key. Every moment of Young Frankenstein feels like it would fit in quite well with the upper echelon (read: the early ones) of Universal monster movies. This has James Whale written all over it, and I get the sense that Brooks enjoyed a James Whale movie once or twice in his life. This cast is perfect. You know it is perfect because it might very well be possible that Madeline Khan is the weak link in the chain, which means it may have the greatest cast ever assembled for a film, as Madeline Khan could keep otherwise underwhelming films aloft through sheer force of will and personality.

*Despite my relative antipathy toward his western opus, it’s hard to fault somebody for making such an indelible one-two punch in film comedy inside of one 12-month period.

**Well, not you Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). Not all films are create equally, if I’m being honest.