by ·Comments Off on Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks)

Wouldn’t you know it, two people associated with different hilarious mid-seventies Frankenstein films died on consecutive days, so we’ve got a double-feature on our hands. It’s Gene and Marty’s movie, but Teri Garr runs away with it. Leachman isn’t around too much, and Madeline Kahn features (hilariously) only in the first few minutes and the last twenty-or-so, becoming happily Franken-brided, which frees Dr. Gene to be with Teri. I was distracted when Gene arrives at the train station and a kid points him to track 29. Is the joke that there’d be so many tracks in Transylvania? Was Dennis Potter watching this on cable while writing the script for the Nic Roeg movie?

by ·Comments Off on Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks)

“What’s a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?”

Memorial screening for Gene Wilder. I haven’t seen this in over 20 years, and probably that was a cropped, edited-for-TV version. It’s kind of a half-assed movie with plenty of stupid scenes, but also quite hilarious and wonderful at times.

Cleavon Little (Vanishing Point) dupes thug Mongo with a candygram:

Brooks probably carefully positioned the pen for this shot:

One complaint: Madeline Kahn’s Marlene Dietrich impression is so awful that I looked up how she managed to get cast in Young Frankenstein afterward, but it turns out she was oscar-nominated for this. Except for Picnic at Hanging Rock and I guess Shampoo, it was an extremely masculine year at the movies, so perhaps there weren’t enough entries.

Ends as a backlot romp with Dom DeLuise, of course: