BLAZING SADDLES - DVD review

"Blazing Saddles" was Mel Brooks's third feature film and the one that put him on the Hollywood star map. After a successful stint as a television comedy writer, Brooks made "The Producers" in 1968, a modest success that later became a cult classic, followed by "The Twelve Chairs" in 1970, a funny picture that was largely ignored by the public and critics alike. Then came "Blazing Saddles" in 1974, obviously a very good year for Brooks as he released "Young Frankenstein" a few months later, and together they made him the new sensation of the comedy world.

"Blazing Saddles" is at once a parody of old Western movies and a social satire on race and prejudice. But those elements alone would never have made the film a hit. Rather, it was Brooks's outrageous political incorrectness that stunned, infuriated, and delighted audiences everywhere. Nothing was sacred to Brooks, as he threw around derogatory racial epithets with abandon and ridiculed every bigoted, ethnic, and religious stereotype he could lay a gag to. The results raised eyebrows, to be sure, but the movie made the name "Mel Brooks" synonymous with daring cinema humor, and the movie became a trendsetter in the world of Hollywood laughter. In the seventies and eighties only Woody Allen would attain such comedic renown as Brooks, but without quite the zany edge.

The plot of "Blazing Saddles" is little more than a clothesline for Brooks to hang his jokes on, and the antics come flying fast, from straight lampoon to outright silliness; from old-fashioned slapstick to topical, witty quips; from puns to pranks to everything in between. Much of it misses the mark and seems dumb even by the lowest standards, but enough of it hits that even after seeing the movie a dozen times a person can't help laughing at favorite scenes.

The time is 1874, and the railroad is coming West. Having the most to gain from it is an unscrupulous Attorney General, Assistant to the Governor, and State Procurer, Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman). "That's Hedley, not Hedy," he keeps telling people, for which the real-life actress Hedy Lamarr sued Brooks, settling out of court. Lamar, Hedley, will do anything to get this railroad built, so when its path encounters quicksand and has to be rerouted through the little town of Rock Ridge, it means clearing out all the townspeople to do so. The story involves Lamarr's frustrated attempts to rid the community of its citizens.

Most of the movie is cartoon fare with cartoon violence (it helps that it's a Warner Bros. picture because we get to hear the Looney Tunes signature strain), but it has a decidedly adult spin (it's rated R for profanity and sexual references). Things start quickly with an onslaught of racial slurs from the white foreman (Burton Gilliam) of an all-black work crew building the railroad. The foreman wants them to toil harder by singing old Negro spirituals and work songs. Instead, the black laborers reply by crooning Cole Porter's "I Get No Kick From Champagne," while the white overseers start singing "Camptown races, doo-da, doo-da."

Lamarr's initial idea to rid the town of its citizenry is to hire a black sheriff for the place, knowing none of the white bigots in town will want to stay if he's there. Naturally, the plan doesn't work, despite Lamarr's bad intentions and the townsfolk's racial bias. Next Lamarr hires a series of no-good villains to tear the place up, but he finds the problem is doubled when he not only has to get rid of the townspeople but now the sheriff as well.

Richard Pryor, who helped cowrite the script, was slated to play the black sheriff, Bart (though never is the term "Black Bart" mentioned, part of the gag), but the studio's issues with the nature of Pryor's stand-up comedy act and the comedian's well-known drug use prevented him from getting the part. So it went to Cleavon Little, a more handsome and dashing hero, no doubt, but a less-formidable funnyman. At his side is Jim, the Waco Kid, a drunken, chess-playing gunslinger played by Gene Wilder. Wilder is always funny, but he wasn't Brooks's first choice, either; Wilder was called in at the last minute when the original actor for the part was found to be in reality too drunk to do the role.

Brooks himself, who had taken a bit part in "The Producers" and a small supporting part in "The Twelve Chairs," assumed his biggest movie role yet as the Governor, William J. LePetomaine, as well as an Indian Chief and a fighter pilot. His portrayal of the governor is broad to the point of absurdity, but he is endearing, nonetheless. Slim Pickens, so good in "Dr. Strangelove" and no stranger to Hollywood Westerns, plays to perfection the dim-witted foreman, Taggart.

Madeline Kahn does a hilarious turn as a Marlene Dietrich clone, Lili Von Shtupp, a femme fatale sent to seduce and abandon the sheriff, who herself gets seduced. Former football star Alex Karras plays Mongo, the monster Lamarr assigns to assassinate the sheriff. Mongo is like the Tasmanian Devil, so tough he knocks out a horse. Dom DeLuise plays a precious and pretentious movie director, Buddy Bizarre, in the film's finale. And a number of cameos show up along the way, including Count Basie and his orchestra; Wilder's soon-to-be wife, Gilda Radner; Brooks's wife Anne Bancroft; and veteran movie hero, Tom Steele.

The all-white townspeople of Rock Ridge are a kick. They're so alike they're all named "Johnson." I suppose Brooks could have named them all "Smith" or "Jones," but he gets more comic mileage out of "Johnson." To illustrate, there's Howard Johnson (John Hillerman); Olson Johnson (David Huddleston), and for those who need it explained, Olson and Johnson were a comedy team; the Reverend Johnson (Liam Dunn); Gabby Johnson (Jack Starrett), whose imitation of old-time cowboy sidekick George "Gabby" Hayes includes a dialect so slurred and garbled it's unrecognizable by anyone who listens to him. It was a gag Brooks would repeat with Kenneth Mars as the Police Inspector in "Young Frankenstein"; and, of course, there's a Van Johnson (George Furth); yes, Van Johnson is also a famous old movie star, youngster.

It wouldn't be a Mel Brooks film without music, so he wrote three songs especially for the show: "I'm Tired," "The French Mistake," and "The Ballad of Rock Ridge," and he cowrote the title song, "Blazing Saddles." But Brooks needed someone to sing the title tune, someone, he thought, like Frankie Laine, who had made such Western hits as "Mule Train," "Rawhide," and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral." But who could imitate Laine? Well, how about Laine? Brooks asked him and he did it.

Anyway, half the time Brooks is the clever, witty raconteur, and half the time he's the naughty schoolboy trying to shock and offend his parents' house guests. Racism and prejudice feel the brunt of Brooks's barbs, and here he spares no one. As Lamarr declares in a hiring poster: "Help wanted: Heartless Villains for Destruction of Rock Ridge. Criminal Record Required. Hedley Lamarr, an Equal Opportunity Employer." Well, Brooks is an equal-opportunity satirist, and it's not only white bigots who get zapped but Jews, Native Americans, gays, Germans, preachers, all rolled into one.

Notoriously, the word "nigger" gets a workout, offending probably as many people as it enlightened, but always used to the detriment of its users if white and affectionately if black. The movie is a slap in the face of racial intolerance, doing so with the back of the hand, making us both recognize and laugh at society's narrow-minded bigotries. "You've got to remember," comments the Waco Kid, "that these are just simple farmers; these are people of the land, the common clay of the new West. You know, morons."

Yes, there are more than few memorable lines: "Excuse me while I whip this out," says Sheriff Bart to the townsfolk. "Why don't you loosen your bullets?" says Lili to the Sheriff. "Head 'em off at the pass? I hate that cliché," says Lamarr to Taggart. "You are about to embark on a great crusade," Lamarr tells his henchmen, "to stamp out runaway decency in the West."

Should I also remind you of the campfire scene and the baked beans? I thought not.

The ending is pure Brooks as the entire cast of "Blazing Saddles" in a moment of cinematic reflexivity overflows into the soundstage of another film production, and the sheriff has to follow Lamarr to the movie's own première for the final shoot-out. Harrumph, harrumph!

Video:
One of my associates at DVD Town, Jason Van Bergen, reviewed WB's previous DVD edition of "Blazing Saddles" and found the picture and sound less than commendable. I'm happy to say that the situation has been rectified in this new 30th Anniversary Special Edition. The movie is transferred to disc at about the same anamorphic, widescreen Panavision ratio as before, here measuring out at about 2.18:1, but at a higher bit rate, rendering its image sharper and its colors deeper and brighter. There are moments of minor fade, to be sure, but they are few and far between, grain is mostly absent, and jittery lines are a thing of the past.

Audio:
The film's original 1.0 monaural sound that Jason so bemoaned has been remixed in Dolby Digital 5.1 and is obviously an improvement. It isn't perfect by a fair measure, but it's good. In fact, there is now a reasonably wide front stereo spread, with strong dynamic impact. But the rear channels are still not fed much in the way of a signal, and there is little deep bass to speak of. The surround speakers are used only for modest musical ambiance enhancement and the occasional ricochetting gunshot. Perhaps the newly remastered soundtrack's only serious fault, however, is a slight tendency toward nasality in voices, which becomes irksome as the movie goes on, seemingly more pronounced toward the end of the film. In any case, the new sonics are welcome and make the home theater experience more pleasurable.

Extras:
For this thirtieth anniversary of the film's release, Warner Bros. have come up with a decent assortment of bonus materials to keep avid fans of the movie occupied after they've watched the show. The first item is a scene-specific commentary by Mel Brooks. The next is a 2001 cast and crew reunion documentary, "Back in the Saddle," twenty-eight minutes long. In it, cowriter Andrew Bergman says he wanted the movie to reveal a hip, 1974 sensibility in an 1874 setting. Reminiscences come from Brooks, Wilder, Gilliam, Korman, and others. Then, there's a brief, three-minute tribute excerpt, "Intimate Portrait: Madeline Kahn"; followed by twenty-four minutes of "Black Bart," the 1975 TV pilot inspired by the movie; and nine minutes of additional scenes, many of which were later edited into a longer, television version of the movie. Finally, there are twenty-six scene selections; English (5.1), French (mono), and Spanish (mono) spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Warner Bros. seem to have finally abandoned the dreaded snapper case for the more convenient keep case, but they do not appear to be including a chapter-selection insert with every release. This one, for instance, has none.

Parting Thoughts:
How can you not like a Western where the heroes ride off into the sunset in a Cadillac El Dorado? I mean, it's so...Hollywood. And so funny. Much of "Blazing Saddles" may seem less than inspired, its style has been imitated so often, but the parts that work still provoke strong laughs no matter how often you've seen them. Face it, it's a landmark film from a funnyman who continues to remain commercially strong and vibrant to this day. Harrumph, harrumph!