1980 Week: Stir Crazy

          After Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder scored as a comedy team in the 1976 farce Silver Streak, a reunion was inevitable. As directed by the venerable Sidney Poitier, Stir Crazy emulates certain elements of the Silver Streak formula—but it never quite matches the earlier film’s frenetic energy. Worse, Stir Crazy bungles a romantic subplot, which is problematic since the sparks between Wilder and leading lady Jill Clayburgh were a big part of Silver Streak’s appeal. Yet the biggest shortcoming of Stir Crazy is the fact that Pryor and Wilder are separated for long stretches of screen time. Whenever the actors are together, Stir Crazy vibrates with good-natured silliness, and whenever they aren’t, the movie gets mired in the humdrum machinations of its contrived plotting.

          The movie begins in New York, where wannabe actor Harry (Pryor) and wannabe playwright Skip (Wilder) work, respectively, as a store detective and a waiter. Both men get fired on the same day, so ultra-optimistic Skip proposes they relocate to Hollywood. Car trouble stands them in Arizona, at which point Skip offers another dopey suggestion—he and Harry don bird costumes to perform a musical number inside a bank as part of a promotional event. Later, two criminals steal the costumes and rob the bank, thereby framing Harry and Skip for the crime. Up to this point, about 30 minutes into the movie, things are going well—the gags are weak but plentiful, and the plotting approaches a farcical level of lunacy. But then our intrepid heroes get thrown into prison, which brings the fast-moving narrative to a screeching halt. Once behind bars, Harry and Skip have predictable (and occasionally offensive) encounters with stereotypical characters including a gigantic serial killer, a tough gang leader, and a queeny homosexual. Meanwhile, Warden Beatty (Barry Corbin) improbably discovers that Skip has natural talents as a bull rider (!), so he orders Skip to perform in a corrupt prison rodeo. (Shades of 1974’s The Longest Yard.)

          Flashes of amusement emerge during the picture’s fleshy middle, such as physical-comedy bits of Pryor and Wilder trying to fit into a miniscule prison cell, but the overall vibe is needlessly heavy and tiresome. By the time the movie grinds toward its bland conclusion, Stir Crazy becomes an elaborate prison-break saga with virtually zero laughs. On the plus side, the picture’s technical execution is impeccable, and the best moments in Pryor’s and Wilder’s performances are highly enjoyable. After Stir Crazy, the actors reunited twice more, for See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991), both of which tarnished the legacy of a once-promising screen pairing.

Stir Crazy: FUNKY

Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)

            Stupidity reigns in Start the Revolution Without Me, a goofy riff on the French Revolution—and not just because the movie’s version of Louis XVI is a dolt preoccupied with his clock collection. Directed by Bud Yorkin and produced by Norman Lear—the formidable combo behind several big-budget comedy movies but especially known for their spectacular success in television (All in the Family, etc.)—Start the Revolution Without Me features a frenetically paced combination of farce, satire, slapstick, and verbal comedy. Most of the humor is broad, gentle, and obvious, more on the order of second-rate Carol Burnett Show gags than the kind of inspired lunacy that took root in movie comedies a few years later, following the ascent of Mel Brooks and the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker collective.

          Among other weak devices, Start the Revolution Without Me employs chaotic fight scenes filled with pratfalls, crude jokes about effeminate men, self-reflexive narration, silly gags predicated on mispronounced words, sped-up photography, and tawdry scenes of men groping and/or ogling women. Most of this stuff was already considered old-fashioned in the vaudeville era. Some scenes in Start the Revolution Without Me almost work, simply because the skills of the performers trump the shortcomings of the material, and the movie boasts amazing production values in terms of costumes, locations, and props. Plus, of course, the movie has Gene Wilder at the height of his powers, as well as an enthusiastic but miscast Donald Sutherland.

          The stars play two sets of twin brothers. In the convoluted narrative, one pair of brothers is raised poor, and the other is raised wealthy. Upon reaching adulthood, both pairs are drawn to intrigue surrounding the French Revolution. Naturally, the poor brothers get mistaken for the rich brothers, and vice versa, leading to trouble as the poor brothers exploit their newfound position in Louis XVI’s court, and as the rich brothers try to escape service in the rebel militia. There’s also a lot of bedroom comedy involving a character loosely modeled after Marie Antoinette, as well as a wink-wink framing device during which modern-day Orson Welles (playing himself) introduces the movie and “tells” the story to the audience.

          Costar Hugh Griffith scores some points playing Louis XVI as a nincompoop, Victor Spinettii contributes a fun villainous turn in the Harvey Korman mode, and Billie Whitelaw is alluring as the Antoinette character. Yet Wilder, naturally, has most of the best scenes—as well as many of the worst—because of his no-prisoners approach. He’s infinitely better playing the rich brother, since that role allows for Wilder’s signature psychotic slow burns, and the early running gag about the rich brother’s affection for the dead falcon he wears on his arm is pleasantly absurd. Alas, even though Start the Revolution Without Me has its partisans—the script, by Lawrence J. Cohen and Fred Freeman, earned a Writers Guild nomination—the movie gets awfully tiresome after a while. The higher your tolerance for brainless humor, the longer you’re likely to stay engaged.

Start the Revolution Without Me: FUNKY

Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970)

          Considering that he collects and sells horse manure for a living, Irishman Quackser Fortune has a bright outlook on life. He makes his own hours, takes a different route every day through the streets of his beloved Dublin, and won’t listen to people who say that horse-drawn delivery carts may soon get replaced by trucks, rendering his profession obsolete. Quackser treats others with affection and respect, expecting nothing but the same in return. Which is why he’s thrown for such a loop when he meets Zazel Pierce, a beautiful but capricious American spending time in Dublin while doing research at Trinity College. Quackser’s instantly attracted to Zazel, and she feels the same way, but their value systems couldn’t be more different. And that’s the beautifully simple premise of Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx, a delightful love story featuring what might be Gene Wilder’s most restrained performance.

          Bereft of his usual tics—the bug-eyed reaction shots, the pratfalls, the screaming—Wilder leads with his innate sweetness, and yet he never makes Quackser seem like a rube. Instead, the character comes across as that rarest of animals, a true innocent. Concurrently, Margot Kidder blends sexiness and worldliness to present Zazel as a modern woman who occasionally wants to meet Quackser on his own level, but then loses interest in him whenever something more challenging comes along. In one of the great victories of Gabriel Walsh’s original script, which was rightfully nominated for a WGA Award, Zazel comes across neither as a contrivance or a villain, but rather as a unique person who falls into the orbit of another unique person. This is character work of the best kind.

          And if the rest of the movie fails to hit that same high level, no matter. The world surrounding Quackser is a believable grind of factory work, hot-tempered relatives, and provincial attitudes. Similarly, Zazel’s sphere includes obnoxious people who wear their education and wealth like shields protecting them from the unclean touch of the rabble. Yes, the dichotomy is predicated on stereotypes, but Quackser and Zazel are such interesting creations that the broad-strokes backdrop works. Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor and director Waris Hussein make great use of extensive location photography, transforming Dublin into the magical canvas upon which the sort-of love story between Quackser and Zazel is painted. Meanwhile, the leading actors fill that painting with resplendent colors.

          Often bittersweet, Quackser Fortune is more of a light drama than an outright comedy, which makes Wilder’s presence even more interesting, since he rarely worked outside the comic realm during his heyday. And though the world is a richer place because of the lunacy Wilder created with Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, and other collaborators, Quackser Fortune points to another viable path his career could have taken. His performance is as lovely as the film itself.

Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx: RIGHT ON

Rhinoceros (1974)

A movie reteaming actors Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel, the stars of Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1967), was not inevitable. Lest we forget, The Producers did poorly during in its original release, although it achieved legendary status later. Nonetheless, it’s disappointing to report that the second Wilder-Mostel picture lacks the madcap magic of their first collaborative venture. Based on the absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros was produced for the American Film Theatre, a short-lived program of stage adaptations exhibited on a subscription basis. The problem with this particular adaptation, alas, is that it can’t decide if it’s a broad farce or a cerebral satire. Ionesco’s original play was set in France and filled with dialogue and images that critics interpreted as lampoons of fascism. Transplanted to modern-day America, the film version loses all of its political bite, transforming into an oh-so-’70s treatise on the dangers of joining the Establishment. And yet if the only thing that the picture did was deliver a clear theme by way of a few laughs, it might have been worthwhile. Instead, the piece retains Ionesco’s central comic premise of a world in which people are becoming rhinoceroses. (Again, the key word is “absurdist.”) Given license to depict rampaging animals, screenwriter Julian Barry and director Tom O’Horgan fill much of the picture with loud scenes of chaos and destruction, interspersed with mannered comedy bits like the scene in which Mostel and Wilder pratfall their way through a grooming regimen. It’s all very artificial and pretentious and tiresome, qualities that are exacerbated by Mostel’s intolerably obnoxious performance. Mugging and screaming like he’s playing to an amphitheater, the actor succumbs to all of his worst tendencies here. Wilder, meanwhile, plays to his strengths, shifting between hysteria and sweetness, though the material fails him at every turn. (Offbeat ’70s screen vixen Karen Black appears in a supporting role, though she seems adrift thanks the inanity of the narrative.) Rhinoceros is praiseworthy on some levels, simply for the commitment with which the cast and filmmakers attack the text, but the way this American version omits the play’s original purpose renders the whole exercise futile. Plus, the fact that O’Horgan never actually shows a rhinoceros runs counter to the stupidly literal nature of the overall enterprise—why chintz on the one thing that could never appear in stage versions?

Rhinoceros: LAME

The Little Prince (1974)

          Although I managed to pass through childhood without any exposure to the story, I’ve learned that French author/aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fantastical novella The Little Prince is one of the most successful and widely read children’s stories of the 20th century. I mention this by way of stating that I approached this film adaptation without any feelings toward the source material, so others can hold forth on whether the picture does justice to de Saint-Exupéry’s writing. Watching the film of The Little Prince as its own entity, I found little to like despite the imaginative narrative and worthwhile themes. Director Stanley Donen, a giant of studio-era musical films whose career was winding down when he made The Little Prince, brings a fair amount of style in the form of clever fisheye-lens photography and general exuberance, but the combination of coldly professional acting by the leading players and distractingly artificial settings for many scenes makes the piece feel perfunctory rather than passionate.

          It’s also not a good sign that when famed choreographer-director Bob Fosse shows up in a rare acting role, he completely takes over the film for several minutes with his signature brand of cinematic and physical movement; although merely credited as choreographer for his own sequence, Fosse likely had a hand in the design of camera shots and editing, as well, and his bit is the liveliest stretch of the movie.

          Anyway, the story of The Little Prince must lose something in translation, because as presented onscreen, it’s insipid. When a character known only as the Pilot (Richard Kiley) lands his plane in the Sahara after experiencing engine trouble, he meets a strange young boy, the Little Prince (Steven Warner), who claims to have come from an asteroid in outer space. The Little Prince regales the Pilot with tales of his encounters with strange characters, including a friendly Fox (Gene Wilder), a demanding Rose (Donna McKechnie), and a pernicious Snake (Fosse). Each encounter taught the Little Prince a lesson, and so does his friendship with the Pilot.

          As communicated through twee songs by the famed duo of Alan Jay Lerner (who also wrote the screenplay) and Frederick Loewe (who also composed the score), the Little Prince’s adventure says something about the importance of retaining a child’s innocence even in adult life. Yet while the content is admirable, the execution is blah. Exterior daytime scenes in the desert are visually dull, nighttime exterior scenes shot on a soundstage are phony-looking, and the tricks Donen uses to simulate outer-space environments are gimmicky. Yet it’s ultimately the performances that keep The Little Prince from achieving liftoff. Kiley, a lovely actor with a resonant voice, is too theatrical, and young Steven Warner comes across as an automaton doing what he’s told. So, even with Fosse’s dynamic dance sequence and Wilder’s touchy-feely extended cameo, there’s little heart in what should be a deeply moving parable.

The Little Prince: FUNKY

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)

          An oddity among Woody Allen’s early films, this picture comprises a series of comic sketches rather than a feature-length narrative—and though Allen’s career is filled with genius quickies, from one-liners to short stories to his hilarious contribution to the 1989 anthology film New York Stories, this movie doesn’t consistently represent his best work. The picture has wonderful moments, of course, and it’s mildly amusing from start to finish, but it ebbs considerably at times, and the lack of a narrative through-line makes the whole thing feel a bit disposable. The movie is based on Dr. David Reuben’s nonfiction bestseller Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), which was credited with broadening the number of sex-related subjects everyday Americans discussed without embarrassment.
          Prior to each of the movie’s seven sections, Allen presents a sex-related question via onscreen text, and then follows the question with a silly comic episode offering a possible answer to the question. Sometimes, Allen scores simply by being outrageous, like the “What is Sodomy?” section featuring a doctor (Gene Wilder) romancing a sheep—the combination of Allen’s sly dialogue and Wilder’s deadpan delivery produces goofy fun. Elsewhere, Allen gets carried away with discursive flourishes such as parodies of well-known film styles; the fact that he slows down the movie to spoof Italian neorealist drama, low-budget science fiction, and even Shakespearean adaptations indicates how far Allen was stretching for material. Another distracting element is Allen’s sporadic onscreen presence. He stars in the first and last segments, as well as two others, so the implied joke of dweeby Allen dominating a movie about sex is diluted. Plus, as was Allen’s cinematic wont at the time, he falls back on childish slapstick when he can’t muster verbal gags, so the tone of the movie fluctuates between cartoonish and sophisticated.

          Having said all that, the picture is worth watching if only for the final sequence, “What Happens During Ejaculation?” Representing Allen’s wit at its most mischievous, the sequence imagines the interior of a human brain as a military-style command center, with an uptight Operator (Tony Randall) calling the shots while body parts perform necessary functions. As the scene progresses, the Operator and his sidekick (Burt Reynolds) organize an army of sperm for deployment into a sex partner’s vagina—and one of the sperm “soldiers” is a nervous dork (Allen) who wonders if he’ll succeed in fertilizing an egg or simply die during the “invasion.” The sight of Allen in a ridiculous costume—white jumpsuit with a comically round abdomen and a tail—is funny before Allen even speaks his first line, so listening to him fret about his impending suicide mission kicks the sequence into comic overdrive.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask): GROOVY

Thursday’s Game (1974)

          The first feature-length narrative written by Mary Tyler Moore Show guy James L. Brooks—who later conquered the big screen with Terms of Endearment (1983) and other films—the TV movie Thursday’s Game is a funny, insightful, and warm study of an everyman in crisis. Gene Wilder, operating at the height of his powers, plays Harry Evers, the producer of a low-rated daytime TV quiz show based in New York. For the past four years, Harry and his pal, clothier Marvin Ellison (Bob Newhart), have been part of a casual weekly poker game with several friends.

          One night, despite worries that his job is in danger, Harry agrees to make the game more exciting by playing for big cash, and he wins a major haul—only to have his “friends,” except for Marvin, say they’re unwilling to pay their debts. A fistfight ensues, which is an amusing spectacle because Newhart and Wilder look ridiculous trying to trade punches with fellow working stiffs, but Harry and Marvin bond during the brawl. Thus, they decide to continue meeting every Thursday for boys’ nights. Then, when the inevitable happens and Harry gets fired, he uses the Thursday getaways to escape home pressures once his wife, Lynn (Ellen Burstyn), starts pushing him to find another job or at least sign up for unemployment, which Harry considers humiliating.

          What unfolds from this relatable scenario is surprising and touching, because Harry goes nuts watching Marvin follow the opposite trajectory—Marvin achieves business success even as his marriage to Lois (Cloris Leachman) crumbles. Thursday’s Game plays to all of Brooks’ strengths, allowing the writer-producer to gently satirize careerism, male ego, marital politics, and other issues. Brooks clearly defines each character, even those who drift in and out of the story quickly, and his script is filled with great one-liners and memorable bits. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Harry has an infuriating showdown with his agent (Rob Reiner), who reveals he didn’t actually know he was Harry’s agent during the last several years—even though he collected 10 percent of Harry’s salary the whole time.

          Director Robert Moore wisely stays out of Brooks’ way, letting the expert script and marvelous actors dominate. The cast is filled with people who made ’70s TV lively, including Norman Fell, Valerie Harper, and Nancy Walker in addition to those already mentioned, and each performer contributes a new, sardonic flavor to the mix. Wilder is wonderful, reeling back his tendency toward overacting but still providing a few of his signature slow-burn moments; Newhart strikes a droll balance of likeable insecurity and tentative swagger; and Burstyn grounds the film with a potent dramatic performance as a woman torn between devotion and the need for honesty. Particularly given its ignoble release—Thursday’s Game was shot in 1971 but not aired until 1974—this is a rewarding comedy that deserves to be seen by many more people.

Thursday’s Game: GROOVY

The Frisco Kid (1979)

The runaway success of Mel Brooks’ Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974) inspired many underwhelming imitators, including pictures by a handful of directors who should have known better. For instance, Robert Aldrich, whose career includes several great action films and melodramas, had no business helming an “outrageous” romp about a rabbi-turned-outlaw—although whether anyone could have made a watchable movie from this gimmicky premise is open to debate. Anyway, Blazing Saddles star Gene Wilder is Rabbi Avram Belinski, a wide-eyed rube who travels from Poland to America in order to assume his post as the leader of a San Francisco synagogue. After getting robbed by hooligans upon reaching the East Coast, Avram finds work on a railroad as a means of making his way West. This brings him into the orbit of Tommy Lillard (Harrison Ford), an outlaw who takes sympathy on the hapless traveler. They become unlikely companions for a series of what presumably were conceived as “wacky adventures.” In Aldrich’s hands, however, the episodes comprising The Frisco Kid are loud non-events, spasms of shouting and slapstick connected by exhaustingly exuberant music—the vignettes look and feel like comedy without actually being funny. While much of the blame falls to Aldrich and his screenwriters for failing to summon inspiration, Wilder is complicit, too. Succumbing to his worst excesses, notably bulging his eyes at regular intervals and screaming most of his dialogue, Wilder presents such a broad caricature of Jewishness that he’s almost unbearable to watch, to say nothing of borderline offensive. This isn’t Wilder at his worst (alas, he was even more grating while acting in the first couple of movies he directed), but this sure ain’t Wilder at his best. As for Ford, caught in the post-Star Wars transitional period of his career, he doesn’t really have a character to portray, so he overcompensates with unearned intensity that doesn’t suit the comedic milieu.

The Frisco Kid: LAME

Silver Streak (1976)

          A box-office hit that gave birth to the on-again/off-again screen duo of funnymen Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Silver Streak is impossible to take seriously for the same reason it’s impossible to dislike: The movie forgoes credibility in order to entertain viewers by any means possible. Essentially a Hitchcock-type thriller played for laughs, the movie follows an unassuming book editor (Wilder) during a cross-country train trip filled with unexpected danger, intrigue, and romance. As the tale grows more and more absurd, George stumbles into a dalliance with a sexy secretary (Jill Clayburgh), gets caught in the crosshairs of an evil conspirator (Patrick McGoohan), befriends a jive-talkin’ thief (Pryor), and survives accidents and near-misses in airplanes, cars, and trains. He gets arrested, chased, framed, shot at, thrown off a moving train, and targeted for murder, and yet he displays great moral character by striving to save his new lover and triumph over the bad guys.

          It’s all very silly, especially with the contrived McGuffin plot device relating to priceless letters written by Rembrant, but everyone involved in Silver Streak approaches their work with the same lighthearted attitude. Director Arthur Hiller keeps things moving briskly, creating comfortable spaces in which his actors can showcase their likeable personalities, and writer-producer Colin Higgins, whose gift for character-driven comedy distinguished ’70s movies like the great Harold and Maude (1971) and the effervescent Foul Play (1978), pumps the movie full of amusing one-liners. So, even though the picture drags on far too long and gets mired in bland action sequences like the elaborate shootout during the climax, Silver Streak is consistently watchable.

          Much of the credit goes to Wilder, who mostly eschews his signature hysterics while playing a straightforward romantic lead; he’s surprisingly believable as a dashing man of the world sharing flirtatious banter with Clayburgh, and his reaction shots whenever things get wild are priceless. Clayburgh is appealing in her mostly decorative role, while Pryor slides into an easy buddy-movie rapport with Wilder. Their obvious shtick, predicated on the differences between a streetwise African-American and an uptight honky, is epitomized in the famous scene of Pryor covering Wilder’s face with shoe polish and teaching Wilder to act like a “brother.” There’s no denying the humor of Wilder emulating urban swagger, but there’s also no denying the way the scene perpetuates demeaning stereotypes. Still, Silver Streak is too milquetoast to seem offensive: The racially insensitive gags are just tools the movie uses to elicit cheap laughs, and it’s hard to get angry at a picture whose only goal is making viewers happy.

Silver Streak: GROOVY

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

          “Pure Imagination.” The title of this sweet Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newley song, as performed by wizardly candy-maker Willy Wonka, says everything about why the exuberant musical fantasy bearing the character’s name is so deeply beloved by audiences: With its flamboyant characterizations, outrageous visuals, and whimsical attitude, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of the most purely imaginative children’s movies ever made. And thanks to tart touches like Gene Wilder’s amazing performance as Wonka–to say nothing of one of the freakiest boat rides in movie history–the picture leavens its touchy-feely narrative elements with edges of real darkness.

          The story, for the few who haven’t read the book upon which it is based, seen the picture itself, or slogged through the shoddy remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), begins when reclusive candy-maker Wonka announces a contest in which the prizes are tours of his never-before-seen factory. Public mania ensues, with candy-industry competitors scheming to get peeks inside Wonka’s works, millionaires buying up contest entries to ensure their children win, and kids everywhere dreaming they might get lucky. The story then focuses on one such dreamer, the sweet but desperately poor Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum), and sure enough he gets a “golden ticket.”

          Accompanied by his good-hearted grandfather (Jack Albertson), Charlie joins a gallery of strange children and their guardians for a weird adventure inside Wonka’s fantasy-land factory, which is staffed by orange-faced and green-haired little people called Oompa-Loompas. As the story progresses, children who exhibit unsavory qualities like gluttony and greed get kicked off the tour in colorful ways, and Charlie discovers an unexpected destiny.

          Geared toward spectacle in every aspect of its production, the movie is not for every taste; some of the songs are so twee that they’re more sugary than the onscreen candy, and the scary bits like the aforementioned boat ride are too intense for many young viewers. Yet the idea of a land with edible rivers and trees is irresistible, the special-effects sequences like Mike Teevee’s cathode-ray comeuppance are clever, and Roald Dahl’s screenplay retains the most important themes from his 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The script also bursts with playful wit, like this eternal line: “Violet, you’re turning violet, Violet!” Best of all, Wilder is wonderful from start to finish. His unforgettable entrance sets a (candy) bar that he regularly meets and surmounts; his Wonka is capricious, judgmental, punitive, and ultimately transformative.
          So in short, if you can watch this movie without wishing you were Charlie, then you’ve forgotten what it meant to be a child.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: RIGHT ON

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975) & The World’s Greatest Lover (1977)

          The comedy world suffered a blow when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder stopped collaborating in the mid-’70s, because Brooks never found a better leading man, and Wilder never found a better director. A good example of how badly these men needed each other is The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. A farcical mystery written and directed by Wilder, the movie features several members of Brooks’ stock company (Dom DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Wilder), and it looks great (thanks to cinematographer Gerry Fisher). Better still, the basic idea of famed sleuth Holmes using an idiot sibling as a decoy is clever and fun. (The movie’s title is meant ironically.) Unfortunately, the gags run the gamut from insultingly stupid to numbingly stupid: Feldman and Wilder dancing at a formal ball with their rear ends exposed; Feldman, Kahn, and Wilder doing a cringe-inducing dance number called “The Kangaroo Hop” (twice); Wilder and British comedy stalwart Roy Kinnear fighting with an oversized glove and an oversized shoe for weapons. It’s all so painful that when cameo player Albert Finney shows up to ask a rhetorical question—“Is this rotten, or wonderfully brave?”—the answer is clear. Only the consummate skill of the players makes Smarter Brother borderline tolerable.
          Wilder went the auteur route again for The World’s Greatest Lover, which is shockingly awful. A period piece about a talent search for a silent-movie heartthrob in the mode of Rudolph Valentino, Lover is filled with moronic slapstick (like an endless gag involving an overflowing bathtub), and Wilder’s performance is atrocious. He spends nearly every scene screaming and bulging his eyes, so he looks like he’s receiving electroshock therapy instead of acting. Playing his wife, Carol Kane tries to ground a few scenes with her offbeat sweetness, but she was obviously instructed to match Wilder’s manic energy to the best of her ability, so she ends up mugging and screaming as well. Supporting Wilder once again, DeLuise goes way over the top in his costarring turn as a psychotic studio executive, and his preposterous hairstyle is just about the only amusing thing in this unbearable movie. Great poster, though!

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother: LAME

The World’s Greatest Lover: SQUARE

Young Frankenstein (1974)

          Astonishingly, comedy giant Mel Brooks managed to crank out his masterpiece, Young Frankenstein, less than a year after completing another outrageously funny spoof, Blazing Saddles. Yet while Blazing Saddles is an anything-goes romp that throws out narrative continuity whenever the opportunity for a gag arises, Young Frankenstein trumps its predecessor because in addition to featuring some of the funniest moments in cinema history, the picture also works as the bittersweet tale of a man, a monster, and the women who love them.

          Conceived by leading man Gene Wilder, who eventually had a falling-out with Brooks after he perceived Brooks as taking too much credit for this project, Young Frankenstein is a pseudo-continuation of the classic Universal Studios Frankenstein series that begin in the early ’30s. The picture is shot in glorious black-and-white to evoke a studio-era vibe, and the filmmakers even tracked down the original Kenneth Strickfaden-created props that appeared in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory during the earlier films.

          The screenplay, by Wilder and Brooks, picks up a generation after the events of the older pictures, when Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder) inherits the castle where his crazed grandfather, Victor, once conducted unholy experiments. Discovering his ancestor’s records, Frederick casts aside his nature as a rational modern scientist in order to stitch together body parts and make a monster all his own. Aided by a trusty hunchbacked accomplice, Igor (Marty Feldman), and a fetching local girl, Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick creates a lumbering Monster (Peter Boyle).

          Wilder and Brooks borrow and spoof famous bits from the Universal Pictures, leading to uproarious scenes like the Monster’s encounter with a blind man (Gene Hackman) whose desire to share a cigar turns disastrous, and Frederick’s hilarious run-ins with an officious policeman (Kenneth Mars), who lost a limb to the monster that Victor Frankenstein created long ago. There’s also room for Frederick’s uptight fiancée, Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn), and the mysterious Frau Blücher (Cloris Leachman), who knew Victor better than anyone suspects.

          Virtually every scene in Young Frankenstein is a comedy classic, from the opening bit of Fredrick experimenting on an elderly patient during a medical class to the climactic musical number, “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which Wilder actually had to fight to keep in the movie because Brooks didn’t originally see the value of the scene. In addition to being riotously funny, Young Frankenstein is virtually note-perfect from beginning to end in terms of character and storyline. The acting is also consistently wonderful, with Boyle delivering a heartbreaker of a performance as the monster; his scene with Hackman is a perfect blend of pathos and whimsy.

          A career high point for everyone involved, Young Frankenstein showcases everything Brooks does well and features none of his often tiresome excesses, and it’s a triumph for Wilder as an actor and as a writer.

Young Frankenstein: OUTTA SIGHT

Blazing Saddles (1974)

          After making a wholly original film, The Producers (1968), and a goofy literary adaptation, The Twelve Chairs (1970), comedy giant Mel Brooks found his true niche in 1974 with the spectacular one-two punch of Blazing Saddles, released in February of that year, and Young Frankenstein, released in December. Satirizing film genres freed Brooks to stack gags on top of gags without having to worry about inventing new stories, since he repurposed elements from old films to create solid narrative foundations. Yet rather than just firing off jokes in these first two spoof films, Brooks took care to imbue even the most preposterous characters with likeable humanity—so, for instance, Blazing Saddles focuses on a black sheriff who combats Old West prejudice by making a fool of every racist he encounters. More importantly, Blazing Saddles reaches such dizzying heights of comic insanity that it’s one of the funniest movies ever made.
          The picture began as an original script by Andrew Bergman, who later became a comedy director in his own right, and the story went through a spirited metamorphosis as Brooks and others added characters and jokes and themes. At one point, comedy legend Richard Pryor was hired to smooth out potentially offensive race jokes, but instead fixated on penning gags for the existentially confused man-child Mongo (Alex Karras), who at one point sadly opines, “Mongo just pawn in game of life.”
          The main story this brain trust generated involves the devious machinations of corrupt politician Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), who wants to demolish a small town and make room for a railroad in which he has a financial stake. By manipulating his state’s oblivious governor (Brooks), Hedley gets a black man, Bart (Cleavon Little), assigned as the town’s new sheriff. Upon seeing the color of the lawman’s skin, the town’s welcome wagon turns into a lynch mob, but soon Bart teams up with alcoholic gunfighter Jim (Gene Wilder) to save the day by confronting Hedley. The story, of course, is of minor importance, because Blazing Saddles is like a vaudeville revue filled with screamingly funny stand-alone gags, most of which are better discovered than described.
          Befitting its tagline, “Never give a saga an even break,” Blazing Saddles upends every imaginable convention of Hollywood Westerns. Conniving villains are made to look ridiculous (Hedley freaks out during bath time when he can’t find his rubber ducky); racial stereotypes are exploited for outrageous laughs (Little’s line, “Excuse me while I whip this out,” has become immortal); and, of course, the picture contains cinema’s most infamous demonstration of the effect baked beans have on the male digestive system, the symphony of campfire flatulence heard ’round the world.
          Everyone in the movie is terrific, with Little exhibiting charisma and great timing while Wilder gives an uncharacteristically soft-spoken performance as his sidekick. Korman is pure genius from start to finish, and Brooks regular Madeline Kahn slays as put-upon German seductress Lili Von Shtupp. The movie goes off the rails toward the end, albeit intentionally, so inspiration eventually gives way to desperation—but the chaos helps give Blazing Saddles such extraordinary shelf life that it’s one of the few modern movie comedies that can still leave fans gasping for air while laughing at the same jokes for the hundredth time.

Blazing Saddles: RIGHT ON