Mel Brooks is in touch with out deepest desires, no doubt about it. Fear, greed, lust, self aggrandizement, jealousy -- everything we enjoy denying that we have.
This is illustrated in the opening scene, under the credits. A coffin is opened. There is a rotting skeleton holding a book. A pair of hands reaches in and tries to remove the book, but the skeletal digits seems to snatch it back. The human hands pull away, then tentatively reach again for the book, but this time they're trembling.
None of Brooks' humor is elegant, revolving as it does around these primitive motives and human weaknesses such as farts. This isn't Woody Allan. Nobody is going to pull Marshall McLuhan out of a crowd and ask him to explain his theories. Nobody in Brooks' movie has ever HEARD of Marshall McLuhan.
And yet when Brooks connects, he pops it out of the park. How can anyone watch the scene in which Peter Boyle's monster visits the blind Gene Hackman without laughing? The lonely Hackman, trying to please his guest, spills boiling hot soup into his lap -- twice. He smashes the monster's Bierstein and sets his thumb on fire. "Where you going'?" whines Hackman after the monster smashes out through the door. "I was gonna make espresso." If the jokes fail, as they do about three times out of four, it's still interesting to watch the actors. They seem to be having a lot of fun. Terri Garr looks like a luscious blond yummy from the Midwest. Maybe she has no glabella but she has a sly bosom that makes up for it. Madeleine Kahn has a small but funny part. She's a good singer too. Why do people die young? We saw this at a theater in the Tanforan Shopping Center in South San Francisco. You should see it too, especially if you are in some kind of Edgar Allan Poe-ish funk.
This is illustrated in the opening scene, under the credits. A coffin is opened. There is a rotting skeleton holding a book. A pair of hands reaches in and tries to remove the book, but the skeletal digits seems to snatch it back. The human hands pull away, then tentatively reach again for the book, but this time they're trembling.
None of Brooks' humor is elegant, revolving as it does around these primitive motives and human weaknesses such as farts. This isn't Woody Allan. Nobody is going to pull Marshall McLuhan out of a crowd and ask him to explain his theories. Nobody in Brooks' movie has ever HEARD of Marshall McLuhan.
And yet when Brooks connects, he pops it out of the park. How can anyone watch the scene in which Peter Boyle's monster visits the blind Gene Hackman without laughing? The lonely Hackman, trying to please his guest, spills boiling hot soup into his lap -- twice. He smashes the monster's Bierstein and sets his thumb on fire. "Where you going'?" whines Hackman after the monster smashes out through the door. "I was gonna make espresso." If the jokes fail, as they do about three times out of four, it's still interesting to watch the actors. They seem to be having a lot of fun. Terri Garr looks like a luscious blond yummy from the Midwest. Maybe she has no glabella but she has a sly bosom that makes up for it. Madeleine Kahn has a small but funny part. She's a good singer too. Why do people die young? We saw this at a theater in the Tanforan Shopping Center in South San Francisco. You should see it too, especially if you are in some kind of Edgar Allan Poe-ish funk.