Blazing Saddles (1974) * * *

Directed by:  Mel Brooks

Starring:  Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Alex Karras, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens

Blazing Saddles took a while to grow on me.   It took me a while to appreciate its comic anarchy.    It also never could be made today.   Some may not get the joke.  They would be too outraged at a black sheriff saying, "Where the white woman at?" to truly understand that the sheriff is intentionally playing at racial stereotypes to tweak the townsfolk that can't stand him because he's black.

There is a threadbare plot in Blazing Saddles which is really just a clothesline for writer/director Mel Brooks to hang all of this craziness onto the film as its running time will allow.    I am sure more wound up on the editing room floor.   Some of it is in bad taste, of course, but a lot of it is funny because Brooks dares you not to laugh.   As Brooks once said in response to assertions that his films are vulgar: "It rises below vulgarity."

The "plot" involves greedy railroad barons who want to build a railroad right through where a town currently sits.   The town's mayor Hedley LaMarr (Korman) will be enriched by the baron if he is somehow able to force the residents out to make way for the railroad.   His "ingenious" plan is to hire a black sheriff named Bart (Little), which would surely scare the ignorant townsfolk enough for them to flee.  It doesn't quite work out that way, so LaMarr then hires a giant, dimwitted goon named Mongol (Karras) to terrorize the town.  Bart is able to thwart Mongol with tricks straight out of Looney Tunes, including an exploding cake.   

Bart hires a drunken gunslinger to be his deputy and hatches an ingenious scheme of his own to thwart the barons and save the town.  Well, as ingenious as a movie like Blazing Saddles will allow.     Along the way, Blazing Saddles cheerfully incorporates bodily functions, blatant racism, puns, and ridiculous scheming.   And then there is Lily Von Schtupp (Kahn), a femme fatale hired by LaMarr to seduce Bart, only to fall for him. Would it shock anyone to learn that part of this has to do with the size of his wang?

Brooks gets away with a lot in Blazing Saddles.    It is lowbrow and highbrow at the same time, but I laughed enough to recommend it.   Little plays Bart not as a dumb, gullible puppet, but as a smart man who takes a perverse pleasure in being hated.   It is fun for him to shock people by playing to their prejudices.   Harvey Korman is at his best when he is playing seemingly sophisticated villains and caves into his nuttiest desires despite his really, really trying not to.   He is the type of guy who hatches sinister plots and then laments "Where's my froggy?" when taking a bath.

Does the movie end with the railroad barons failing and the town being saved?    I guess so, but then the movie veers off into a direction that no one sees coming.   In another movie, this might be considered excessive.   In Blazing Saddles, it's icing on the cake.