Blazing Saddles 1974

[8.0/10] The common refrain lately is that “You couldn’t make a movie like Blazing Saddles today. And it’s right. You probably couldn’t make this exact movie in 2020. There’s too many racial slurs, too many jokes about rape, and too many homophobic epithets at play.

But I think you could still make this kind of movie in the modern era, even if the tone might be a tad different, because its heart is in the right place. The film has been so swept up as part of the Mel Brooks pantheon that it’s easy to forget Richard Pryor is one of the credited writers (and, but for studio reluctance, would have been one of its stars.) With that in mind, as distasteful as some of its bits and dialogue is to the modern ear, much of it’s forgivable, if only through who its real targets are.

Which is to say, the bad guys in Blazing Saddles are a pack of rock-headed racists who get what’s coming to them, while the good guys are a black sheriff and the colleague who doesn’t so much as blink at working with him. Even the racist townsfolk, whose prejudice fuels much of both the comedy and the story of the picture, are derided as morons who have to be led by the nose (and more importantly, self-interest) into accepting their African American lawman as the source of authority and enforcement in their humble berg.

It’s a satire, one that uses that sort of offensive language to criticize the people uttering it. That’s not to undermine the ways in which it could easily hurt people to hear those words, regardless of intent, or criticism that it flows a little too freely regardless of the context. But it’s to suggest that if Jordan Peele or Spike Lee or even Mel Brooks alum Dave Chapelle made a movie like this, the public would still accept it, and probably even celebrate it, for the uncomfortable yet potent points that it makes in all its farce. The only difference may be that Pryor’s name would be higher on the poster than Brooks’s.

And yet, this feels very much like a Mel Brooks film -- less for the racial commentary or freewheeling humor about ethnicity, gender, and the like, and more for the abject silliness of the whole thing. Social viewpoint aside, Blazing Saddles wouldn’t work a whit without the supreme irreverence that infuses every inch of the frame.

A great deal of that stems from the post-modern approach that suffuses the film. The movie’s villain wonders what to do while looking directly at the camera, only to stop mid-soliloquy to ask, “Why am I asking you?” Sly lines of dialogue wink at the contrivances of the script and the genre. All that winking, of course, is topped by the movie’s climactic set piece, where the inevitable third act gunfight and skirmish spills onto the studio’s lot, replete with pie fight and pistol-packing confrontation outside of the movie theater. Separate from all the social issues given life through Pryor and Brooks’s setup, there’s a comic lunacy to all of this that wins the day.

Likewise, a lovable cartoonishness keeps the picture light and comically outrageous. Literal Looney Tunes music plays while Cleavon Little’s Bart thwarts the unfortunately-named Mongo. On-screen trickery makes Gene Wilder’s Jim an impossibly fast gunfighter to amusing ends. Horses get punched out, hats get shot up, and showering locals find themselves exposed. It’s all extraordinarily silly, but that’s the charm of this one, a movie that absolutely refuses to take itself seriously.

It’s also a surprisingly action-packed movie. There’s rarely much at stake, and it maintains a tone of weightless, Bugs Bunny-esque screwball antics, but Brooks and Pryor spare no bit of spectacle when realizing the madness and mayhem caused by the various cutthroats and horse-thieves marauding their way through town. As a Western homage, Blazing Saddles is firmly tongue-in-cheek, but doesn’t skimp on the horse-work or over-the-top scraps and skirmishes.

That all matches with the vaudevillian flair that permeates the whole feature. There’s so much fast-talking irreverence and downright goofiness, that you can hardly finish laughing from the last gag before the next one hits. In truth, not every joke lands, but they come so fast and furiously that if you don’t like the current one, you just have to wait a second before the next one arrives. The film’s social satire tack is to make the bigoted bad guys look like fools, and it uses every ridiculous tool in the comic arsenal to accomplish it.

And yet, the group that truly gets the short end of the stick is women. While there’s a level of insensitivity to indigneous people and people from the Middle East, among others, these are mainly passing gags. By contrast, the female presence in Blazing Saddles is more consistent and exists to be sexualized and impressed or disdainful of various characters’ talents (or lack thereof) in the bedroom. Madeline Kahn delivers an uproarious performance as always, and her performance of “I’m Tired” brings the house down on- and off-screen, but the movie’s biggest sin on that front is relegating its female characters to being sexual props.

Still, for all the otherwise distasteful language and less-than-enlightened bits that Pryor and Brooks deploy, for the most part, they aim their jabs in the right direction. Let’s be real, I’m a thirty-something white guy (and one reared on Catskills-esque humor generally, and Brooks’s humor specifically, to boot). This kind of movie is designed to make people like me laugh, regardless of whether it might hurt someone else to hear those words or see those gags. I’m not a good thermometer for whether this movie is offensive or potentially even hurtful, when viewed with modern eyes.

But my temptation is to forgive the film’s more dated excesses, at least as far as race is concerned, with the sense that it’s of its time and means well in whom it endeavors to remove the stuffing and dignity from. The good guys are either diverse or accepting; the bad guys are bigots and dolts, and the ones who switch sides do so less out of high-minded principle than out of a sense of pragmatic tail-saving. That says as much about race relations in 1874 as it does about 1974, and sadly, is still relevant right now.