Best mel brooks movie

[Punisher 04]

Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs.

 

[mister Lennon]

Spaceballs was funny and all, but Young Frankenstein was the best film in general terms.

 

[thealiasman2000]

They should do a Spaceballs prequel that makes fun of the Star Wars prequels.

Mel Brooks should come back as Yogurt and Senator Skroob, Rick Moranis should come back as Dark Helmet before he went evil, and they should recast Barf, Colonel Sandurz, The King, Pizza the Hutt and the Spaceball Clone Troopers.

 

[jaguarr]

Man, I don't know if you can really pick just one. Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles are both pure genius and The Producers is a classic, but some of his more underrated flicks have some really great moments in them. For example, the part in High Anxiety where the patient comes in and says he's completely cured of the sudden pains in his neck and his fear of werewolves and the stuff that Harvey Korman does in that scene, are some of the funniest things I've seen on film. And Spaceballs, though it's pretty sophmoric at times, has some pretty great visual gags and some great lines from Rick Moranis. I can't choose just one.

jag

 

[SpiderHulkThing]

space balls is my fav. I saw a boxset of like 7-9 of mel's movies at WM, but I just couldn't part with $80.

 

[Gabe99]

TheDigitalBits:
EDGE OF TOMORROW, BATMAN: 25TH, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN: 40TH, VIKINGS: S2, NEW STREISAND BDS & LAUREN BACALL RIP

20th Century Fox is also getting in on the catalog anniversary edition action on 9/9 with a brand new Young Frankenstein: 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray.

Extras will include audio commentary with director Mel Brooks, interviews with stars Marty Feldman, Gene Wilder, and Cloris Leachman, deleted scenes and outtakes, production photo galleries, the Blucher Button, 4 featurettes (Inside the Lab: Secret Formulas to the Making of Young Frankenstein, It’s Alive: Creating a Monster Classic, Making FrankenSense of Young Frankenstein, and Transylvanian Lullaby: The Music of John Norris), and more.

And starting on 9/1, if you visit the YoungFrankSweeps.com website (it’s not up yet), you’ll be able to enter for a chance to win one of 40 set photos signed by Brooks himself.

The Blucher Button!

10 Kickass Things Mel Brooks Did (Besides His Movies)
3) Produced David Lynch's The Elephant Man

THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)

David Lynch first learned and employed several innovative film techniques during the production of Eraserhead (1977) that he would later master in his second feature film The Elephant Man (1980). David Lynch took Hollywood by storm on the release of this film, receiving some of the strongest critical acclaim of his career and enjoying more success at the box office than he would with any of his other films. The Elephant Man is widely considered Lynch's most accessible film for mainstream audiences, and is considered a good starting point for most viewers interested in his work.

 

[Marvolo]

It isnt considered his best, but I love Dracula: Dead and Loving It!

 

[Sawyer]

Blazing Saddles, but Young Frankenstein has one of my favorite moments.

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[antonydelfini]

Ive only seen 4 Brooks movies, but Blazing Saddles is one of my favorite movies.

 

[The Endless]

Blazing Saddles is my fave. But i love Space Balls and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

 

[Bran The Man]

Spaceballs.

"I bet she gives great helmet."

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

A toss up between Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs...

With Blazing Saddles just edging out Spaceballs!

 

[Leenie]

I think that Blazing Saddles is a comedy masterpiece, so of course it's my favorite. I'm not using that term lightly; I really do believe that it's a masterpiece.

Here are my top 5 Mel Brooks films:

1. Blazing Saddles
2. History of the World: Part One
3. Spaceballs
4. Young Frankenstein
5. The Producers

I also really enjoy High Anxiety. I think it's easily his most underrated movie.

 

[Gabe99]

Gene Wilder’s ‘Willy Wonka,’ ‘Blazing Saddles’ Returning to Theaters
AMC theaters and Warner Bros. are bringing back a pair of Gene Wilder films — “Blazing Saddles” and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” — in honor of the late actor this weekend.



Mel Brooks on how to play Hitler, and how he almost died making Spaceballs


Mel Brooks Remembers the Funniest Movie He Ever Made
Stories of almost quitting Blazing Saddles, working with Richard Pryor, the disastrous response from Warner, and how he'd do a Spaceballs sequel


AMERICAN MASTERS
Mel Brooks: Make A Noise

 

[Silvermoth]

Mel Brooks is a living legend. We should treasure him now while we still have the chance

 

[sueb1863]

I love Blazing Saddles but I would have chosen Young Frankenstein instead to put in theaters this weekend. Wilder starred in that one.

 

[The Chris]

Blazing Saddles is my favorite followed by Young Frankenstein but i have an intense love for Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I love Spaceballs too.

 

[Gabe99]

Fathom Events Young Frankenstein Oct 5 2016

SPOILERS!!!
'Young Frankenstein': Read THR's 1974 Review

In Dec. 1974, as Gene Wilder's Young Frankenstein hit theaters, The Hollywood Reporter gave a rather luke-warm review, stating "It is good-natured, lowbrow, back lot, hit or miss humor, but with no cumulative effect beyond its succession of hard worked jokes." Now recognized as an essential part of the Mel Brooks canon, the film currently sits at No. 72 on THR's entertainment industry ranking of Hollywood's Favorite Films. The original THR review is below.

Mel Brooks’ new Frankenstein comedy, written and starring Gene Wilder, is closer in spirit to the 1948 ‘Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein’ travesty than either the 1931 Karloff version or the 1974 Warhol send-up. It is an old-fashioned programmer-type comedy in which all your favorite funny people get together and ham up a well-known story.

The screenplay recognizably follows the basic Mary Shelley story using repetitions skillfully to milk its jokes. It is good-natured, lowbrow, back lot, hit or miss humor, but with no cumulative effect beyond its succession of hard worked jokes. More theatrical than cinematic in its conception, this group effort relies on the improvisation of its performers.

Gene Wilder as Dr. Frankenstein mugs his way through with straightman reactions of disbelief and then crazed inspirations. Peter Boyle, still recognizable beneath rather tame monster makeup by William Tuttle, follows an unscary, dim-witted approach, carrying the monster’s need to be loved to its most literal extreme.

Marty Feldman as the humpbacked Igor is the most consistently funny, capable of stealing any scene with a dilation of his bulging eyes. Madeline Kahn deserves a more original character than her tease fiancée role which she nonetheless plays to the hilt. Cloris Leachman is misused in broad caricature.

As a police chief, Kenneth Mars needs more to do than simply goose step his mechanical limbs like Dr. Strangelove. Gene Hackman, hidden under a hermit’s beard, gets good mileage from a blindman routine. Liam Dunn is funny as a wasted old codger volunteer for Wilder’s amusingly unethical classroom demonstrations.

Michael Gruskoff’s modest production, shot in black and white and small screen, works more for movie buff nostalgia than flash or spectacle.

Dale Hennesy’s production design feels much like the 1931 version to the extent of having Kenneth Stricfaden, who worked on the 1931 laboratory mechanisms, revive his fantasy designs.

Director Brooks executes several good jokes on horror movie style, but his film has no distinctive visual style of its own. His shooting is less interesting than his staging, but is coyly effective when imitating carefully composed 30’s style static frames, well realized in Gerald Hirschfeld’s competent photography. Thunder and lighting effects punctuate throughout.

Dorothy Jeakins’ costumes effectively bring out the joke dimensions of each character. Aside from fancy optical transitions, John Howard’s editing is unstylish, but serviceable. John Morris adapts old music to campy ends, the monster frequently being lulled by a violin solo by Gerald Vinci. – John H. Dorr

 

[Gabe99]

Mel Brooks Riffs on ‘Young Frankenstein,’ Laddie and the Biz

The four guys sitting around the lunch table in Beverly Hills have been business associates and friends for decades.

Many decades.


This includes the decade known as the ’70s, when lunchee Mel Brooks directed and co-wrote “Young Frankenstein” (1974) for fellow lunchees, former Fox studio chief Alan Ladd Jr. and the film’s producer, Michael Gruskoff, as well as longtime Ladd associate Jay Kanter, who once repped the likes of Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe.


But this is clearly Brooks’ show, a point he reinforces when Gruskoff tries to tell their guest about the day the two of them and star Gene Wilder pitched the “Young Frankenstein” project to the top brass at Columbia Pictures.

Gruskoff may have gotten through the first word of the first sentence but he quickly and wisely lets Brooks finish: “LET ME TELL THE STORY I CAN TELL IT BETTER THAN YOU.”

“So everything was great, they loved the pitch, the budget was no problem,” recalls Brooks, “and I think we were almost out to Gower Street when I whispered, ‘Oh one more thing: it’s going to be in black and white.’ Suddenly there was a thundering herd of Jews descending on us; ‘What are you talking about??!!’”

But Brooks quickly gets to the real point of his story: “Then we took it to Laddie (Ladd Jr.) who had only been at Fox a few months and when we told him it had to be in black and white he said, ‘Of course it does.’ There’s the difference.”

Today Brooks is a genuine Comedy God with seven legendary decades of hits under his belt in virtually all genres, including records (with fellow God Carl Reiner), television, films and Broadway. But in 1973 when he and Gruskoff were trying to set up “Young Frankenstein,” which started as a Wilder treatment, Gruskoff was coming off the Dennis Hopper drug-addled epic fail “The Last Movie” and Brooks had just swan-dived at the box office with “The Twelve Chairs.”

“‘The Producers’ made a penny and ‘Twelve Chairs’ less than a penny,” recalls Brooks. “We had no script but we had Gene, Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman and none of them meant anything.”

Now, 40 years later, with Fox Home Entertainment rolling out a commemorative Blu-ray, Brooks’ Hands and Feet Ceremony Sept. 8 at the Chinese Theatre and a tribute screening Sept. 9 at the Goldwyn, Brooks acknowledges the current studio scene would be a tough place to replicate the Ladd-led Fox lot of 1974.

“Laddie had faith in the people who were making the films,” recalls Brooks. “He trusted (Robert) Altman to deliver the movie he said he was going to deliver. You didn’t get a lot of notes from Laddie. He wasn’t a fool, but it was more about the filmmakers than the films. Columbia had told us we needed to cut the budget from $2 million to $1.8. Laddie said it should be $2.2 (million).”

The Ladd bet paid off handsomely for Fox, winding up in the Christmas season as one of the year’s five top-grossing films.

But Ladd’s sigh of relief probably came much earlier in the year when “Blazing Saddles,” the film that Brooks made for Warner Bros. after “Twelve Chairs,” but unreleased when “Young” was greenlit, hit theaters in February. It ended up being 1974’s biggest hit, and provided the one-two punch that sent Wilder’s career into the comedy stratosphere.

And what was it like for Gruskoff to follow the Peruvian oddball odyssey of “Last Movie” and partner with Brooks to bring “Young Frankenstein” to mega-hit life? Words fail the garrulous Gruskoff so he turns to song, warbling to Brooks across the table: “Night and Day, you are the one …” Mel Brooks does not claim to be able sing Cole Porter better than Gruskoff, so we move on.

Mel Brooks announces Young Frankenstein book -- EW exclusive

 

[lime]

So I am the only one to vote Dracula: Dead and Loving It?

I love that movie. Makes me laugh every time!

 

[Slushy]

History of The World Part 1. The movie was hilarious and it gave us the legendary Spanish Inquisition scene.





He also gave us this controversial, but catchy gem from "To Be Or Not To Be"

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[Thundarr]

While they're all great, as a big sci-fi geek I had to go with Spaceballs.

One thing I'd love to see Mel Brooks do before he dies is a spoof of high fantasy sword & sorcery films. Something along the lines of Your Highness, but with more Spaceballs type of humor.