Spaceballs (1987) MonsterVision review & host segments
Director Mel Brooks ended his hilarious "History Of The World Part I" (1981) with spoof ads for non-existant films including Jews In Space. "Spaceballs" spoofs everything from Star Wars (with well over half of Mel's budget going to ILM for special effects) to Alien (the late John Hurt collapses, out pops a monster, and he says, "Not again!" as the monster goes into a song & dance), Planet Of The Apes (the apes, riding horses, see something on the beach at the end of Mel's movie and say, "There goes the neighborhood"), and others. Mel Brooks plays both the evil Emperor and the little Jedi master Yogurt (who has a commercial for Spaceballs merchandise within the scene, spoofing the ultra-commercialization of Star Wars). Rick Moranis of Ghostbusters plays the evil Dark Helmet. Bill Pullman is in the Harrison Ford role, with John Candy as his big furry sidekick. Daphne Zuniga (who previously starred in the low-budget Star Wars spoof "Hardware Wars") plays the kidnapped Princess, with Joan Rivers as her Jewish robot. Michael Winslow of the Police Academy movies is on hand to provide his own sound effects as Dark Helmet's communications officer. Additional cast: Dick Van Patten (father of the star of Zone Troopers), George Wyner, Lorene Yarnell, Renny Graham, Rhonda Shear, Dom DeLuise (Cannonball Run). 96 minutes rated PG
High Anxiety (1977)
Director Mel Brooks also stars in this spoof of Hitchcock films as a psychiatrist with vertigo who is appointed head of a creepy sanitarium (with Cloris Leachman as Nurse Ratchet. Come to think of it, Leachman played a similar character in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" (1967) as the head of a white slavery ring in a Chinatown bordinghouse. Barry Levinson (director of Rain Man and Sphere) co-wrote the script (as well as co-writing Mel's Silent Movie in 1976) and has a cameo as the psycho hotel bellboy who attacks Brooks in the shower (spoofing Psycho) As Brooks is first driving toward the sanitarium, the music builds ominously...and builds and builds...until a bus carrying an orchestra passes him on the highway. Additional cast: Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Dick Van Patten, Ron Carey, Howard Morris, Murphy Dunne, Jack Riley, Charlie Callas. 94 minutes rated PG
New Faces (1954, co-writer only)
Mel co-scripted this movie version of a popular Broadway review, which had a lot of future stars: Ronny Graham (who would later appear in Brooks films), Robert Clary (Hogan's Heroes), Eartha Kitt (Batman TV-series Catwoman), Alice Ghostley (the bumbling maid in Bewitched), Paul Lynde (Uncle Arthur), and Carol Lawrence. 99 minutes. No relation to "New Faces of 1937" starring Milton Berle with Joe Penner, Parkyakarkus, Jerome Cowan, Harriet Hilliard and Ann Miller. Then again...
The Producers (1967)
Now a popular Broadway play, director Mel Brooks based this movie partly on a Zero Mostel-type small-time off-Broadway producer he once worked for and partly on "New Faces of 1937" with Mostel in the Milton Berle role as the owner of an unwatchably-bad play. In Mel's version (which won him an Oscar for Best Screenplay), the producers (Mostel and Gene Wilder) deliberately want to put on a bad play because Mostel has sold 25,000% of the profits (that's 100% twenty-five times), so if it flops, no investor has to be paid, while keeping the extra invesment money. The play they come up with in the movie is a musical tribute to Nazi Germany, with the classic song "Springtime For Hitler & Germany" (watch for Mel's cameo in this clip as a dancer saying "Don't be stupid be a smarty, come on and join the Nazi Party"). They hire a former-Nazi (Kenneth Mars) to write and star in it, and think they can now retire to Rio. But the stunned audience decides that it's a comic satire and the surprise hit now has investors wanting to be repaid...
Additional cast: Dick Shawn, Lee Meredith, Christopher Hewett, Andreas Voustinas, Estelle Winwood, Renee Taylor, Bill Hickey. 88 minutes.
The 12 Chairs (1970, writer/director/actor)
Impoverished Russian nobleman (Ron Moody) seeks 12 identical chairs smuggled out of Russia because one has a fortune in jewels hidden inside. But a rival (Dom DeLuise) is also after the chairs, so they race to find each chair one by one. There are not really any sympathetic characters, though Mel Brooks in a supporting role is hilarious as ever. 94 minutes rated G. This version was filmed in Yugoslavia, and there have been other movie version of the same basic story filmed by others in Hollywood, Germany, England, Argentina and even Cuba.
Shinbone Alley (1971, aka Archy & Mehitabel, co-story only)
Mel Brooks only animated movie to date was this odd-ball feature based on his Broadway musical of a "lovesick, philosophical cockroach" and "the object of his affection, a hedonistic cat." Leonard Maltin says it has "some witty and tuneful moments, and great vocal performances by Eddie Bracken and Carol Channing," but that it's not for kids. Additional voices: John Carradine, Alan Reed (TV's voice of Fred Flintstone)
Blazing Saddles (1973)
This one set the tone for Mel's most popular movies--spoofs of various genre types. The first thing he did was go against Hollywood tradition of all-white casting in Westerns. In the real West most menial labor (including cowboys) was done by non-whites, so this spoof is actually more authentic in that regard than most previous westerns. Slim Pickens is hilarious as a redneck foreman on the railroad who is more concerned about losing a handcar sinking in quicksand than the black workers sinking with it. Anyway, to "punish" a small town, scheming Harvey Korman talks the Governor (Mel Brooks) into sending them a black man as the new Sheriff (Cleavon Little in his greatest role). For the title song, Mel asked Frankie Lane to sing it strait, making it even funnier. The script was a team effort by Brooks, Richard Pryor (who Mel wanted to be in the movie but the Studio said no), Andrew Bergman and Norman Steinberg. 93 minutes rated R. Some language, and entire scenes are cut for TV showings. The Family Channel showed the (beans-eating) campfire scene with the sound turned off. Additional cast: Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, David Huddleston, Alex Karras (who punches out a horse), Burton Gilliam, John Hillerman, Liam Dunn, Carol Arthur, Dom DeLuise, Robert Ridgely, George Furth, and a bunch of Nazis (a chase scene goes thru adjoining movie sets, including one apparently filming the "Springtime For Hitler" scene). And later, when Mel Brooks noticed that Kevin Costner wasn't bothering to do an English accent in "Robin Hood," the result was Mel's spoof movie Robin Hood, Men In Tights
Dracula: Dead and Loving It (a past Monstervision flick)
Mel Brooks put Leslie Nielsen in Gary Oldman's wigs from Bram Stoker's Dracula and leaves gaps for the laughter. Otherwise, same flick, with some improvements. With Harvey Korman, and Amy Yasbeck, who actually knows how to do an English accent.
This just in: a shipment of lead paint from China was contaminated with toys