Silent Movie (1976)
Silent Movie is a wholly inspired comedy from Mel Brooks, a modern-day silent movie, complete with slapstick gags and satirical digs at modern Hollywood. That it isn’t really as funny as his previous outings...
Tagged: Dom DeLuise
Smokey and the Bandit II (1980)
I’m not sure what it is about Hal Needham that he can make a couple of fun and entertaining films like The Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit, and yet completely lose his mind when trying to...
History of the World Part I (1981)
If one were to chart Mel Brooks’ directed movies based on quality from the beginning of his career to the end you’d have an almost perfect forward slanting line downward. History of the World Part...
The Cannonball Run (1981)
The race from Darien, Connecticut, to Redondo Beach, California, is called the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, named after daredevil driver Erwin “Cannonball” Baker in the early 20th century. This outlaw race stretched nearly 2,900 miles across the country. The record run was 32 hours and 51 minutes, averaging an insane 87 miles an hour. It started in 1971, when Brock Yates and Formula One star Dan Gurney won the very first one. In all, only five of these races were ever run. Across those years, drivers racked up more than a hundred speeding tickets, but remarkably, there were no accidents involving innocent bystanders. The entries were as wild as the concept: in 1971, the Polish Racing Drivers of America showed up with a van carrying 300 gallons of fuel so they could drive nonstop—though one mistake could have turned them into a rolling fireball. You...
The Twelve Chairs (1970)
It’s the Mel Brooks film very few have heard of, and for long periods of time since, wasn’t available for most to rent or purchase. There is a DVD out of it now, the...