Blazing Saddles (1974)

Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” is setup as the lowest common denominator flick ever made, complete with barbecued beans and farts around a campfire, but that’s the real joke as “Blazing” blazes the false square-jawed Anglo heroes old Hollywood Westerns and their rah-rah-rah Americana propaganda, the very racist founding of our great nation and all the right-wing patriots who shrug off slavery and massacres as not that bad. Brooks pushes every over-the-top, vulgar joke to the point of jaw-dropping delirium. Some work, some don’t. And Brooks ain’t kidding around. The plot is almost beside the point: Circa 1874, Cleavon Little is Black Bart, an African-American railroad worker handpicked as a prank to become sheriff of a small town marked for railroad right-of-way. His sidekick: The Waco Kid, the fastest drunk in the west, played by Gene Wilder. Alex Karras is a thug with an acute philosophy of life, Harvey Korman a bigot, and Madeline Kahn is so f’n tired. Brooks, working from a caustic script co-written by Richard Pryor, opens with a sing-along scene of “Sweet Chariot” as the best put down of white thug bigots ever put to film. Classic. P.S. I know bigots who’ll never “get” this film. A+

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975)

Following “The Producers“ (Broadway), “Blazing Saddles” (western) and “Young Frankenstein” (classic horror) -- all made by Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder starred, wrote and directed the spoof “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” on his own. Some veterans of the prior films, mainly Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise and Madeline Kahn, appear in supporting roles in this story about a case too lowly for the pipe smoking great detective. Sherlock instead kicks it to his kid brother, Sigerson Holmes (Wilder), a musical-loving wannabe who ought to be in the same therapy class as Leo Bloom. What the case is all about is irrelevant. The gags count here, none better than a Moriarty (Leo McKern) who must commit an evil act every 24 minutes, cannot add and has a height issue. McKern steals the film, even from the likes of the great cast. There are solid laughs all around, but as a whole this falls short of Brooks gold. The ending is choppy, as if Wilder couldn’t decide how to roll credits. B

The Producers (1968)

"The Producers" is my favorite comedy of all time.

From the start, this 1968 Mel Brooks comedy about two men intentionally producing the ultimate Broadway bomb in order to make a fortune is a sick, twisted and nasty joke. It opens with Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock making it with an elderly widow. Sex. He seeks her money, she seeks a fucking thrill. Tit-for-tat. He has lots of these encounters, you see. In walks Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), a panic-prone accountant with no spine. Poking around Max's cooked books, Bloom realizes that a producer can make more money off a Broadway bomb than a Broadway hit. The con is on as the two men finance a sure-fire dud in "Springtime for Hitler" -- a glowing Nazi tribute written by a fanatical SS loyalist. Sick. Twisted. Nasty.

The laugh per minute ratio is God-sized high, none more so than the realization that Brooks is ripping Hollywood's low tastes, not Broadways. Brooks' staging of the play within the film is so offensive, it's brilliant.

The cast is on all cylinders from Mostel and Wilder to Kenneth Mars ("Young Frankenstein") as the Nazi and Christopher Hewitt ("Mr. Belvedere") as a cross-dressing gay director. PC this is not, thank God. Every line is a classic and endlessly quotable. Avoid the terrible musical remake; it's offensively bad. A+