Blazing Saddles (1974) - film review

In 1874, construction work on a new U.S. railroad is halted when it runs into an area of quicksand.  The State Attorney General, Hedley Lamarr, persuades Governor LePetomane to authorise a change of route that will see the railroad redirected through the town of Ridge Rock.  To avoid having to compensate the townsfolk, Lamarr hires a gang of thugs to drive them out of their homes.  When this fails, he coerces the governor into appointing a black railroad worker, Bart, as the town’s new sheriff.  As expected, Bart receives a frosty reception when he arrives to take up his new post but the townsfolk treat him more kindly after he defeats the notorious bullyboy Mongo, with the help of his deputy, Jim (formerly a sharpshooter known as the Waco Kid).   An increasingly desperate Lamarr then sends in the German seductress Lili von Shtupp to conquer and destroy Bart, but again the plan backfires.  Lamarr has no option but to assemble an army of the most loathsome desperados and villains a movie set has ever seen to wipe Ridge Rock and its inhabitants from the face of the Earth.  Unfortunately, Bart is ready for them...

Mel Brooks left no cliché unturned and no comic device unused in his totally unhinged parody of the western.  Brooks’ third film would be his most successful.  It took over 100 million dollars at the box office and is cited as the highest grossing western of all time.  Although it is less highly regarded than the director’s subsequent horror spoof Young Frankenstein (1974), Blazing Saddles is easily one of the great comedy classics of American cinema, even if many of its jokes have well and truly past their sell-by date and some are so naughty that they would even make a Parisian brothel owner blush.

When the film was first released, it divided critical opinion.  Whilst some reviewers were impressed with the sheer abundance of gags that the film offered, others were dismissive of its lewd humour, exemplified by the now legendary camp fire scene in which bean-eating cowboys fart and burp an unseemly ode to flatulence.   The racial references were also a source of contention and can still cause offence today (the word "nigger" is mentioned 17 times, which is nothing compared with how many times the word "shit" is used).  Then there are the explicit sex jokes, which still appear risqué for a piece of mainstream entertainment.  It is not hard to see why John Wayne declined to make a cameo appearance in the film.

On the race issue, Brooks’ intention is clearly not to offend but to draw attention to the uncomfortable truth of how the West was really won – through the systematic extermination of the indigenous population and exploitation of Negro slaves.  Unfortunately, the director’s political messages somehow manage to get lost beneath the seemingly endless barrage of insane slapstick and filthy lavatory humour.  This is a shame, because racial prejudice was still a major concern in America in the mid seventies and this film, to its credit, confronts the issue head-on, showing that racial discrimination isn’t just wrong morally, it is also completely illogical.

The film’s chaotic ending is an obvious sign that the screenwriters had run out of ideas and falls back on the old tried and tested formula that was perfected by Mack Sennett in the silent era: if you can’t think up a joke, just throw a pie into someone’s face.   Blazing Saddles may not be the most sophisticated of spoofs, but it is a great deal of fun, and whilst many of the jokes are damp squibs, there are enough laugh-out-loud gags to make you wish you had been born with a much larger ribcage.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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