The Producers (1967)

 "Deutschland is happy and gay...."

I haven't blogged much in recent days because I'm cramming for a big interview on Wednesday morning for a potential promotion at work, after which normal blogging will resume. Tonight, however, is my night of rest, with good Cornish ale and entertainment of the strictly relaxing kind.

It's absurd that I should see this film for the first time at forty-four, but there are so many seminal films I still haven't seen, even having blogged more than 750 of them over the last ten years. It is, of course, no less brilliant for the fact that I haven't been living under a rock all my life and am very much aware not only of the concept (if not the precise accounting subterfuge) but of the signature song.

It's surprsing, I suppose, how long it takes to get to the theatrical performance, but this is a surprisingly linear film, plot-wise, setting up and executing the conceit with very little deviation. Yet it's very Mel Brooks somehow, even if his films don't usually show such focus. This very Jewish comedy about Nazis is full of grotesques, not least Max and Leo themselves. I knew that Gene Wilder was a good comedy actor but Zero Mostel, whom I've never previously seen in anything at all, acts him right off the set. We also have the parade of randy old ladies, the Nazi scriptwriter, and the camp director and his associate who perhaps show us how far we've come in LGBT+ representatives in cinema over the past half century.

This was 1967, though. I suppose it was somethging to have LGBT+ representation at all. And this film is a comedy triumph. Just the thing to prepare me for three whole evenings of soul-destroying interview prep...

Young Frankenstein (1974)

"He would have an enormous Schwanstucker!"

Ok, so Gene Wilder excels, in the best performance I've ever seen by him, as Victor Frankenstein's grandson Frederick, who he plays in a delightful pastiche of Vincent Price. Gene Hackman is great too, and ends his scene with a splendid ad-lib. But the film is really about Marty Feldman, whom we must all worship. I mean, one of his ad-libs even caused Aerosmith to write their most well-known song. That's impressive.

The film- in monochrome, utilising the same sets, using deliberately similar opening titles- is a superb pastiche of James Whale's two Frankenstein films. The humour is classic early Mel Brooks, but the sense of a cast having fun, and the ad-libbing, make the film. Marty Feldman, though, shows again what paragon of comedy he is.

There aren't as many laughs per minute, perhaps, as later Mel Brooks films, but the jokes are funny, and just as gloriously Jewish. This is a pastiche specifically of the Universal Frankenstein films by James Whale, in monochrome, using similar opening titles and even using the same lab equipment, with riffs on several scenes. But this is a world where you can get on a train in New York and get off at a "Transylvania Station" where things are still very Mittel-Europe and Ceaucescu's regime is nowhere to be seen. It's the world of Mel Brooks at its very best.

Spaceballs (1987)

"There is only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Star!"

There was bound to be a proper Star Wars spoof sooner or later, and always a fair chance that it would be Mel Brooks who did it. It's a fairly straight spoof, really, with counterparts for every major character aside from Luke Skywalker. But then Luke Skywalker is incredibly boring, so who cares?

The characters generally pass muster; Bill Pullman makes a good Harrison Ford and a good star. It's fun to see Rick Moranis as the Darth Vader character, and even more eyebrow-raising to see Joan Rivers, of all people, as the C-3PO equivalent. There are lots of amusing digs at the original movies, of course- we get a gangster called Pizza the Hut and an amusing sight gag at the start as the camera pans across a long, long, long Star Destroyer. Still, these things are funny, but this is no Airplane.

I liked the metatextual bits, mind: Barf comments on a "nice dissolve" at one pont, and I love the moment where the Spaceballs reach into their home video collection (all Mel Brooks movies, naturally) to play the movie they're currently making, in real time. There are loads of little touches like this (I love the moment where Dark Helmet accidentally kills a cameraman during the lightsabre fight!), and they're my favourite thing about the film. There are some nice pop culture references, too, including a Transformer(!) and a cameo from John Hurt reprising that scene from Alien. And I loved the name "Prince Valium". Although not as much as "Colonel Sanders"…

I was perpetually amused at how similar to Earth this far, far, far, far away galaxy was; on Druidia they even conduct their weddings to a blast of Wagner's Wedding March, apparently. They have bumper stickers in the future. The telephones, videotapes and headphones are all very '80s, and characters are heard playing Bon Jovi and Berlin. They even have Jewish humour and loads of it- the Schwarz is Yiddish slang for, well, er, what gets implied at the start of the lightsabre fight. And we get lines about a "Druish princes" and how "she doesn't look Druish". Still, I'm sure there was a lot more of this that went right over my head.

Spaceballs might not be the greatest comedy ever made, but it's a fun way to spend an hour and a half. It's a deceptively clever spoof with a lot to say about the media and how merchandising is taking over popular cinema, to the point of Dark Helmet playing with Kenner action figures. I enjoyed it a lot, and I intend to do some more Mel Brooks stuff soon. I haven't seen any for ages.