Happy 2021. Sorry for the lack on content; I’ve been busy attempting to be the best version of me, for me, in what promises to be an exciting new year of quarantining.

A bit of exciting news to report to those who have nothing else going on in their lives: currently working on a long-form post tackling a very important subject. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, spurred on by the death of Cloris Leachman, I wanted to forward what promises to be a very controversial take (at least to my audience of like 15 people), which is:

Mel Brooks’ “classic” comedies blow chunks.

There…I typed it. And no, it did not feel good. But it had to be said. Let me explain.

As a child of the 1970s, it was always a thrill catching Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein on network television…

Even better were the times when a cool friend blessed with an early VCR rented the Betamax cassette so we could watch the films in all of their uncut pan-and-scan Borscht-Belt glory:

• Lili Von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles: “Hello handsome, is that a ten gallon hat or are you just enjoying the show?” (Guffaw!)
• Bart in Blazing Saddles: “Excuse me while I whip this out.” (Cackle!)
• Inga in Young Frankenstein: “He vould have an enormous schwanzstucker!” (Titter!)
• Igor the Hunchback in Young Frankenstein: “I heard the strangest music from the upstairs kitchen and I just…followed it down. Call it… a hunch. Ba-dum chi!” (Chortle!)

Literally tears of laughter rolling down my freckled, angelic, very handsome early adolescent face. So funny I could barely breathe! So funny I feared I might pass gas due to a sudden loss of sphincter control! Seriously.

Fast forward the wired VCR remote three decades plus, to 2016 point of fact, when Gene Wilder passed into the great vaudevillian review in the sky. Prostrate with grief at the loss of one of America’s first gentlemen of comedy, I turn to Mrs. CFS and say, “Gosh, honey, we need to watch Blazing Saddles tonight.” Mrs. CFS shrugged, her gaze never leaving the People magazine spread across her lap.

We repair to the couch. The film unspools, ninety-three minutes of widescreen fart jokes, sexual innuendo, dimwittery, boobs and n-word gags, each moment less funny than the last, a good 90% of the jokes landing with the kind of thud not heard since that rock landed in Coconino County, AZ, and gouged the Barringer Crater.

Harvey Korman and his rubber ducky schtick? (Cringe) Cleavon-Little-has-a-big-dick-cause-he’s-a-black-dude gag? (Eye-roll) Mel Brooks cross-eyed, harrumphing, basically retarded governor with the busty assistant? (Ugh)

Tell me I’m wrong!

That said, some good did come from that 2016 viewing: For the first time I realized I must’ve been a really dumb child.

But it wasn’t just me! Check out this Blazing Saddles love:

• Roger Ebert—a “crazed grab bag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken.”
• Library of Congress (2006)—”Culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
• American Film Institute (2000)—#6 AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs

Fast forward with me another five years, to the sad January day when the world learned that Cloris Leachman, aged 94, was taken from us much too soon. Mr. and Mrs. CFS again agree that, in order to celebrate the life of this singular talent, we must revisit Young Frankenstein. Surely it will be funnier than Blazing Saddles!

Dear reader, it is not. How Mr. Brooks, a man of great talent, could’ve watched it come together in the editing room and not wanted to put a bullet in his brain demonstrates one of two things: 1) he had no self awareness or 2) what was considered funny back in the day bears little to no resemblance to what we find funny in 2021.

I submit the following:

Marty Feldman…ugh. Every scene with the guy and his punny, 4th-wall-breaking nincompoopery elicits a deep, hopeless groan.

Remember that film about the soccer team that crashed in the Andes? The one where they started eating each other? I’m pretty sure it had more laughs.

(I will offer this: the scene with Gene Hackman as the kind old blind man who tries to feed the Creature is a classic.)

But what do I know? Maybe it’s your favorite. According the the unimpeachable folks at Wikipedia, Young Frankenstein:

• Ranks No. 28 on Total Film magazine’s readers’ “List of the 50 Greatest Comedy Films of All Time”
• Ranks No. 56 on Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies”
• Ranks No. 13 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 funniest American movies
• And, finally, to add insult to injury, In 2003, the film was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the United States National Film Preservation Board, and selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry.

And to those facts and figures I have no comment beyond these two GIFs: