Blazing Saddles hit the theaters 30 years ago today, on February 7, 1974.
There oughta be a law against Mel Brooks. Mostly likely, there are already at least a couple. This was probably his very wrongest movie ever. "Never give a saga an even break!" he said, and he didn't. He took every cliche about the West and gave it a good twist, and every cliche about Western movies.
No small part of the awesome wrongness of this flick doubtless came from co-author of the screenplay Richard Pryor. Hard telling just which lines of dialogue and which twist came from which pen, but the mockery of dumb racists made up the absolute funniest parts of the film. Boy, were they some dumbass crackers.
My favorite moment came fairly on with the chain gang. The evil road boss wants the black prisoners to sing some Negro spirituals or something. They complied with a sophisticated acapella harmony version of "I Get a Kick Out of You." Getting to my big favorite part, the dissatisfied evil Slim Pickens road boss then tries to show them how blacks are supposed to sing, flopping and bouncing around like an idiot as he sings "Camptown Ladies." Yee-haw!
Article comments
1 - Matt Paprocki
"Has anybody got a dime? Someone's gotta go back to town and get a shitload of dimes!!"
2 - Dirtgrain
"Baby, please. You're making a German spectacle of yourself."
3 - Matt Paprocki
"Oh boys, lookie here!"
"Hey, where all the white women at?"
"Work, work, work, work."
"Little red devils, they'll love these."
"Man drink like that and don't eat, he is going to die."
"When?"
4 - JR
Actually I think the chain gang boss, Lyle, is played by Burton Gilliam. Slim Pickins plays Taggart, who shows up blasting away on his six-shooters with, "What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin' on here?"... You know the rest.
5 - Al Barger
We could get real careful about getting the proper job title for the Slim Pickens character, but that'll get silly pretty quick. Evil Henchman would be a good descriptive phrase. Or perhaps Hilarious Stupid Evil Henchman.
6 - HW Saxton Jr
"We'll take the niggers and the chinks but we don't want the irish...."
7 - Al Barger
Now look, if you're going to start putting in the funny quotes from this flick, you might just as well paste in the whole damned script.
8 - someone
"the way you people out here lally-gagging around, you'd think it was a hundred and twenty degrees. can't be more than a hundred and fourteen!"
9 - "Well my name is Jim, but most people call me...Jim."
"Are we awake?"
"We're not sure." "Are we...black?"
"Yes we are."
"Then we're awake." "But we're very confused."
10 - Pete Rose
Meeting is adjourned. It is? No, you say that, governor. What? Meeting is adjourned. It is?
11 - Smokey
Got to be the scene where Hedley Lamar decides who all he wants in the gang of mercinaries that will attack Rock Ridge.
12 - Dr Dreadful
Nah. The very end, when Brooks completely abandons the pretense that this isn't a movie, knocks down the set, gatecrashes the sound stage of a Busby Berkeley-style musical, has the fight spill out onto Hollywood Boulevard and ends with Little and Wilder riding off into the sunset... in a limo.
Sheer genius.
13 - Dr Dreadful
And before someone starts screeching at me about spoilers, the film's over 30 freakin' years old and is one of the best ever made. If you haven't seen it by now, that's your own fault.