As it had been a couple of decades since I�d seen Young Frankenstein,I decided to sit down and watch it just a couple of hors before going to see the musical. � According to Mel Brooks, the entire idea for the original film was Milwaukee native Gene Wilder�s. The comic actor/writer evidently agreed to do Blazing Saddles if they could work on Young Frankenstein next. Wilder�s distinctive prin...

Most of Mel Brooks� most beloved movies were released not so long ago in a lavish nine-disc Blu-ray box set, complete with hardcover book. Brooks fans on modest budgets will be happy to learn that several of those films have been issued as individual Blu-ray discs. Coming after this summer�s dour and disappointing Robin Hood, it�s refreshing to have a bit of fun with Brooks� comic itera...

The funny thing about "The Mel Brooks Collection" is missing, his hilarious debut film, The Producers (1968). Naturally, the nine-disc Blu-ray collection is full of funny moments, almost too many to count, from Brooks' brilliant satire of greed set in Bolshevik Russia, The Twelve Chairs (1970) through the Hollywood genre parody Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). As recounted in the essay incl...

Would you believe they finally got around to making �Get Smart� into a movie? Would you believe they tried it once before? Well, scarcely anyone remembers The Nude Bomb (1980), starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, the bumbling spy struggling to make the world safe for democracy. Adams played Smart in the 1960s series but no one was interested in seeing a remake of the spy spoof only 10 y...