Look, Im sure you’ve read many MANY think pieces on the racial under and overtones of ‘Blazing Saddles’. On a moral level, im sure there are as many folks who enjoy the ‘humour’ in this for the wrong reasons as much as their are people who enjoy this film for the actual INTENDED humour of the work.

To clarify, my stance on this film is that ‘Blazing Saddles’ depicts white people (Wilder excluded) as big dumb idiot racists, and the black cast as self aware, charismatic and ‘knowing’, but not above, being silly. The humour ISNT in the fact that the majority of the cast get to use the hard ‘R’ word, its not in the racial profiling. its a lampooning of the time, what folks were generally like, and the absurdity of that time in history.

We as the audience are expected to relate and view the film from Bart and/or Jim ‘The Waco Kids’ perspective…In short, if you dont think this film has a clear leading character you can relate to, or if your finding yourself siding with Hedley Lamaar or Taggart…You’ve watched the film wrong. Its not that they couldnt make ‘Blazing Saddles’ these days because of ‘Woke’. Its that they dont NEED to make ‘Blazing Saddles’ because ‘Blazing Saddles’ already exists, and that time has been and gone.

The story of a former slave turned railway track layer, Bart is one step ahead of the men who beat him and his fellow workers, to the point that eventually through the dumb cowboys stupidity (and as part of a bigger plan by the devious Hedley Lamarr) he ends up unwittingly being assigned the title of ‘Sheriff of Rock Ridge’ a small town set up directly in the path of Lamarrs aforementioned railway line.

Rejected by a backwards and racist, god fearing town. Sheriff Bart lays low in the town jail, where he meets Jim (Wilder) a town drunk sobering up after a night in the cells. The pair strike up a friendship and its revealed that Jim is in fact ‘The Waco Kid’ the fastest hand in the west…with the shakes.

The pairs friendship ultimately results in a broader acceptance from the town, and after Hedley sends in several attempts to destroy the town that Bart disrupts and halts. The town slowly begins to warm to the pair. Leading to ever increasing chaotic moves from Hedley, his right hand man ‘Taggart’ and his lugnut henchman ‘Mungo’. Comedy ensues.

Cards on the table, ‘Blazing Saddles’ isnt my favourite Mel Brookes film, Its likely top 3…But I personally prefer ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘The Producers’ a little bit more. The script is a little on the saggy side for my taste. Its crammed to the gills with humour, but it throws so MUCH at the screen that, to me? it feels less like a carefully crafted and curated multi layer comedy, and more like a wet cake of every flavour thats slowly sliding off the cake board onto the floor. It has a VERY high hit rate on gags…but a lot of the gags, by modern standards are kind of lame, and some of the jokes left me with crickets.

The act structuring is pretty decent for the most part, it opens a little slower than i’d like, but once it works up a head of steam and really gets going, it delivers the kind of comedy gut punch you really want in a movie like this…Unfortunately Brookes cant help himself with the 3rd act and things get strangely meta as the plot leaves the highway, crashes through the barrier and heads to space. in scenes HIGHLY remeniscent of ‘Casino Royale’ from not some 7 years prior. I imagine people not familiar with ‘Royale’ would see the ending of this film as wonderfully ‘out of left field’, but to me I found it feeling a little creaky and ‘done’.

That isnt to fault the characters here who are all zany, wonderfully daffy and deleriously delightful. Its that same flavour of ‘Brookes’ magic that you know and love, with a little bit of help from Richard Pryor to really help get it over the line.

Direction is razor, imitating a lot of the classic western shot types and creative designs. If you wernt aware of the cast and went into this EXPECTING a western, you’d almost certainly really believe this was one for the first 10 minutes or so at least. GORGEOUS scene structuring and a clear creative direction in vision is pretty obvious here. It doesnt really bring anything ‘new’ to the genre…But what it does, it does very well and I appreciate it.

Same goes for the cast direction which is just STELLER. some of the best line deliveries, physical comedy and camera/set placements in Brooks career are present here and my god he is RELENTLESS. I Love Young Frankenstein and The Producers…but I do believe this may be Brooks best film for cast direction.

The cine too is lovely, if not a little simplistic at times. the wides and ultra wides really pop in HD and have a gorgeous depth to them. set based sequences however are a little simplistic, which is a shame, things settle into a bit of a drab brown and beige funk until we get to go on location again…which is a real shame because of how beautiful those location shots are.

The edit is a masterclass in comic timing, cuts are PERFECTLY timed with exactly the perfect amount of beats between the feed lines and the punch lines. a wonderful work, the only thing im a bit confused by really is more on a technical level. the transitions in this film seem to have an ultra long lead, meaning the footage degrades slightly for AGES both before and after a cross transition happens…In most films, its usually a few seconds either side…but here, almost entire sequences will have this degredation…I found it unusual…and a little distracting… ho hum.

Performance wise, everyones in their element. Cleavon Little is the star of the show as Sheriff Bart, charismatic, charming, perfect on line delivery. He has a wonderful screen presence and the film almost certainly would have been a poorer fare without him. Gene Wilder is surprisingly mute in this production, he doesnt really do a whole lot, but the handful of scenes where he does get a decent roll of the dice he unloads both barrels quite wonderfully and he gets the tone of the picture and his delivery near enoug perfect.

Harvey Korman as Hedley is a wonderfully cartoonish villain and an excellent foil to Littles performance. he’s much more up tight and subdued. But has a great physical performance that really helps carry the picture from first scene to last. The rest of the cast dont dissapoint either. Though a problem I have with this film (and a few of Brooks works) is it feels like the characters outside of the main core cast seem to only exist for one liners and dressing. and im not talking about extras…basically if your B-tier cast in a Mel Brooks production. Be prepared to have one really good joke handed to you, and then to basically just be relegated to either rumbling around in the background or doing that joke again in the background. Its a bit of a shame and I feel it would have been nice to give, what is a pretty stellar cast. a bit more depth or range to work with.

And finally; the soundtrack! its a PERFECT parody of the classic western genre, with just enough modernisation to help keep it feeling fresh. It cues the film perfectly, though does feel a little bit repetative by the end credits. maybe a bit more variety or range within the style they’re working with would have just helped seal the deal for me on this one.

‘Blazing Saddles’ is…pretty much fine. its fun, I enjoyed it, it absolutely has its moments and deserves the title of ‘A classic’, but I totally understand the arguement that even if its lampooning dumb racist culture…by using the language of racists, its culpable to racist enablement even if its just to a small degree. I personally dont go THAT far…but I understand that arguement more than the ‘you cant say/do these things anymore!’ arguement that right wingers seem to trott out every few years.

I think if you are offended even by just the words of racism, you probably wont be able to settle into this one. and I get that. if you can take this though for what it is (a sincere attempt to kick a load of racist wet wipes and their ancestors up the arse) I think you’ll quickly settle into, and enjoy this one.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/blazing-saddles/1/

Short but sweet. One of Steve Martins finest performances. A comedy lasagna of EPIC proportions. There are jokes inside the jokes INSIDE THE JOKES…impossibly good fun. Tender, charismatic. A wonderful work, my only criticism is 5-10 minutes shorter, and it’d be truely perfect.

Watch ‘The Jerk’…just…just go watch ‘The Jerk’.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-jerk/

Watched on Sunday September 22, 2024.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-monster-club/4/

Watched on Wednesday September 11, 2024.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hundreds-of-beavers/1/

Probably the 3rd time watching this movie, i’d previously seen the MST3K riffed version (Go Packers!), unriffed and tonight, it was the turn of the ‘Rifftrax’ crew to give this uncomfortably incestuous picture a run through the ringer

It’s exactly what it says on the tin, a meteorite containing dozens of diamond hard spider eggs crash land in a field in the mid west prompting 2 or 3 storylines revolving around a dollar tree Tom Atkins and his science partner lab tech friend trying to find the location of the meteor (and theres something about a black hole going on) and the main plotline revolves around a small hillbilly cluster family who find some of the eggs, hatch them and unleash…THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION!!!

Theres a good reason this one is a prime returning candidate for riffers old and new. The script feels like an automatic writing experiment gone awry, the pacings awful, the tone is dryer and stodgier than unbuttered bread and just plane icky at points with Alcoholic mums hitting on 15 year olds, and incestuous uncles trying to coeerce underage nieces into awkward positions for fake diamonds…its…an experience…make no mistake. The act structuring is sloppy with no clear raising or lowering of the stakes, and the film abruptly ends with a resolution that comes out of left field and feels rushed.

The directions more competant than SOME of this films peers…but that really isnt saying much, again its overly basic, doesnt really follow the ‘rules of film’ and doesnt feel particularly ‘refreshing’ to sit through.

the cine is rushed, with poor compositions and strange B-roll choice, the editing is atrocious, with a lot of the sound effects and music cues getting abruptly cut off before they’re even halfway through playing.

The performances are atrocious, everyone looks like they’re on the verge of severe heart failure. exhausted, tired, sweaty, barely able to remember their lines…this cast look like they begrudge having to physically act in this thing…its amazing.

One of the more infamous entries from Bill Rebane, The Giant Spider Invasion is a bizarre film…but one I do ultimately have a bit of a soft spot for. The Rifftrax crew did a pretty good job on this one with some really funny bits a couple big hitters and their short to open proceedings was equally hilarious. I do still think the MST3K version is my preferred way to catch this one…But this more than scratches the itch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/rifftrax-live-giant-spider-invasion-2019/

Kicking off my Fall season this year, I decided to join some friends on a podcast to discuss ‘The Hollow’ a modern day sequel to the ‘Headless Horseman’ story thats really more like an extended high school melodrama than a horror film honestly.

The plot is set in the modern day of 2004, and a young high school student looking to branch into local history has taken a job talking about the tale of the headless hoseman in sleepy hollow. Its initially played as just that, a fictional tale, but after a chance encounter with a gravekeeper, its revealed that theres more to the myth than first meets the eye and that our hapless local historian may in fact be a long lost descendant of Ichabod Crane.

With a growing love triangle emerging out of left field between a Jock, our hero and the head of the cheerleading team COMBINED with a subplot about our lead and his dad not having the best relationship in the world…The annual Halloween Hayride may be thrown into chaos when the headless horseman seemingly returns from the grave.

This one? was dull. painfully dull. A good friend of mine put it best ‘There are ‘Horror’ movies, and ‘Halloween’ movies…This is a Halloween movie’ and its true. The horseman himself appears for around 30 seconds in the first 12 minutes of the movie and then isnt seen again until the 50 minute mark of the film, The movie itself has 5 minutes of end credits and 3 minutes of opening titles making the just over an hour and 22 minutes ACTUALLY an hour and 17, and basically the entire movie struggles to deliver on the premise almost immediately.

The opening act is split down the middle, with the first half of act 1 more than meeting the brief in setting up a ‘modern’ sleepy hollow sequel. But the second half of the first HEAVILY deviates into what is essentially a ‘Dawsons creek’ style high school drama…the grave keepers appearence is welcome, but he’s basically just doing a dollar store ‘Crazy Ralph’ impression that doesnt grow much beyond that. Amazingly, he’s probably the best thing in this film and he seems to largely understand that this film ISNT going to be the next great work, and so he kind of leans into a not *too* serious quasi comedy portrayal for the character. Which was very endearing.

The 2nd act is a flabby stodge of high school drama and the gravekeeper trying to convince our lead that nefarious happenings are occuring…which leads us to a 3rd act finale thats *fine*, but left quite a bit to be desired and ended VERY abruptly and without logical reason.

The tone of this things all over the place, I dont think they knew for sure whether they wanted to be VERY serious or a little tongue in cheek, so they try both and it ends up not quite achieving either. the pacing is criminally slow for most of the runtime as the film DESPERATELY tries to hit TV movie feature runtime…

It seems to REALLY want to do gore and proper horror, but because this film was seemingly produced for the ABC Family channel, it means all but one of the kills happens off screen, and the ONE sex scene in the film contains no nudity, no visual sex and ends with one of the worst decapitation scenes i’ve seen in a good while.

Non of the characters have any sense of depth or detail. What you see is what you get, they’re all one note, stereotypes of the type of character they’re supposed to be, so the Jock is THE jockiest jock, the football dad is THE most negative toxic one note football dad you’ve seen.

Because theres no depth, once you get who these characters are, it quickly dries the whole film out, as you realise, these characters arnt going to grow and develop across the runtime. This is all theres going to be for the 83 minutes (+commercials)

Put it this way, if I was checking this out, looking to scratch a horror itch. I’d have been VERY dissapointed. this is a film that trades more on vibes than anything else, and even than…its not particularly great at that.

The direction and cine are ‘fine’ all things considered. I didnt love it, the creative decision to add a little camera sway to most of the shots, I believe was intended to give a sense of unease…but ultimately, it felt forced and didnt suit the scenarios at hand. the colour grade choices were overly basic and kind of poor…its basically desaturated and tinted orange…the fact they’ve black crushed all the night footage too makes a lot of the 3rd act pretty painful to sit through, because you stuggle to see whats actually going on, and what you can see is edited so feverishly it makes it hard to absorb.

Compositions overly basic and a little dry, its a step up from the SOV circuit at the time…but not by much, and the edit is breakneck and frankly unpleasent in places.

The performances are all equally one note, and quite dry. With only Stacy Keach as the gravekeeper really having ANY kind of memorable/notable character within the piece…Everyone else (including star to be Kaley Cuoco) were just utterly forgettable and lacked any real kind of on screen presence.

And the soundtrack is THE most generic early 2000’s grunge score you’ve ever heard in your life.

Oh…and as an aside (because the world NEEDS TO KNOW!) there are several scenes where Ian (our main character) and his mum have heart to hearts…the way those scenes are shot though are VERY weirdly arranged and give the impression they’re romantically involved. In fact during the first altercation between them, I missed the fact she was Ians mum and thought they were dating…its SO weird…

The Hollow is about as generic as they come for low budget early 2000s horror/vibe movies. It lacks any kind of depth or ‘bite’ that would have really kept me watching, it feels rushed in some places, dragged out WAY past the reasonable limits in others and the near total lack of gore or on screen kills really hampers an already yawn worthy production. I wasnt a fan of this, I cant recommend it and im almost certain there are other better ‘sleep hollow’ adjacent productions out there…Dull.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-hollow/

No Notes.

Its an extended episode of the Batman ’66 tv series but with a bigger budget and better effects, it carries over wonderfully, everyones giving 100% and camping it up to the max.

The only thing I can think is it maybe would be interesting to see this edited into a 4 part TV special, or to see it re-edited into a 90 minute ‘TV Movie’ length.

Otherwise? for what this is trying to achieve. it ABSOLUTELY nails the assignment.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/batman-1966/