
A wild, wacky spoof by Mel Brooks of every cliche in the western film genre, telling the story of a black sherrif who is sent to clean up a frontier town.
ISBN:
9780790757353
0790757354
9780790731483
0790731487
0790757354
9780790731483
0790731487
Characteristics:
1 videodiscs (93 min.) :,sound, colour ;,12 cm.
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Add a CommentOverrated comedy- the funniest scene is the one where the cowboys are eating beans around a campfire and are farting copiously.
Politically incorrect film that skewered everybody equally.
Gucci saddlebag?
Over the top? Yep.
However, it still relevant today on how much work to counter racism.
Irreverent, witty, and hilarious, this movie is the spoof to end all spoofs of Western films.
Particularly hilarious are prancing, lisping, mincing sequences to the tune of “Throw up your hands/Stick out your tush/Hands on your hips/Give 'em a push”—but certainly not more hilarious than lines such as “I hired you people to get a little track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots!” (How either of these serves to “ridicule prejudice, injustice, and apathy” is not immediately clear.) One looks with interest to reviews of DVDs that portray African Americans as shiftless simpletons and Asians as inscrutable villains.
Exceptional, funny! Nice sound track too.
This was almost the film that paired Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor for the first time. (That would come a few years later, with 1980's "Stir Crazy.")
Pryor co-wrote the wild and bawdy screenplay and was considered for the role of Sheriff Bart, but his burgeoning drug use and general unpredictability quashed the idea.
So Warner Brothers went with veteran actor Gig Young, who'd won the 1969 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his work in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" Within days Young was fired because, um, of his drug (alcohol) use and general unpredictability...
But it all worked out anyway, because the cool, elegant and dryly witty Mr. Cleavon Little was simply letter-perfect as Rock Ridge's first Black sheriff.
Little is priceless in his suave seduction of the Wonderfully Wacky Madelyn Khan and inspired in those moments when he breaks the Fourth Wall to address the audience directly. (The manic Pryor could never have brought any of this off.) He has such terrific chemistry with Wilder it's a shame they didn't work together again.
A special affectionate nod to the peerless Harvey Korman, then and now best known as Carol Burnett's brilliant second banana, in his hilarious turn as the weaselly Hedy--"That's HEDLEY!"--Lamarr, whose schemes set the lunacy in motion.
NOTE: A word to those with delicate sensibilities. This film is unapologetically politically incorrect. It was conceived, written and produced in an era when Hollywood was finally loosening up about race and America's racial history--the groundbreaking TV series "All In The Family" debuted the year "Blazing Saddles" was released--and mainstream humor was becoming more pointedly satirical and confrontational. This was certainly true for Pryor, who initially got in the comedy door following Cosby's gentler, family-oriented style but by the early seventies was coming into his own as a take-no-prisoners stand-up comic.
Aptly described as the film that killed the Western, this film is politically incorrect, incredibly insightfully funny in the worst possible way. Don't watch this if you are easily offended. Don't miss it if you are a fan of comedy.
A deeply racist,so-called comedy,that is not funny,because they used the N-Word too much with massive glee period.
Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks teamed up to write "Blazing Saddles". No wonder it is such a comedy classic. It is just one of the funniest western ever filmed. Certainly it broke new ground with a black sheriff as the basis of the story. It is like no western town I ever saw on film and I certainly am glad to laugh along a the priceless jokes poked at everyone in the film.
I hand't seen this in years and didn't think it would hold up, but it's not only funny, but surprisingly edgy in its treatment of race. I don't know what happened to Cleavon Little, but he's great in a role that was originally meant for Richard Pryor, who is credited on the screenplay. Quite possibly Brooks's best film and the gold standard of comic westerns (suck it Seth MacFarlane). "Where the white women at?"