Blazing Saddles (1974) | First Time Watching Reaction | Wild JUST WILD

Original movie: Blazing Saddles (1974)
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Intro - 0:00
Reaction - 01:12
Thoughts/Review - 34:54
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NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.
All rights belong to their respective owners.
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[@naelar13]

And yes, the horse was trained to do that. The SPCA back then threw an absolute fit over this scene.

[@drigerdranzer7514]

15:57 Mel Brooks even had jiddisch letters on the headband. The joke there is from the healthy western genre that they are spoofing when the hero was white and perfect, the native Americans were played by Jewish and Indian actors and they did eat beans right and left but never farting.

[@drigerdranzer7514]

10:38 The biggest star of the whole cast. The one and only Count Basie and his band.

[@johnnehrich9601]

Yes and totally out of place in the dessert, along with Bart with a Gucci bag, for the supposed time period of 1874.

[@JimmyRenReacts]

They were phenomenal

[@naelar13]

The Yes/No is a reference to truckers back in the day. It meant that, when driving, you should pass a big rig on the left (yes), not the right (no). This is because it was much more difficult for the driver to see a car passing on the right. I barely remember seeing things like this on trailers when I was a kid, but they were pretty much gone by the end of the 1970s. The inference here is that bull/ox = big rig.

[@JimmyRenReacts]

I didn't know that, thanks!

[@williamjones6031]

1. Mel Brooks played the Governor, the Indian Chief, the round-up thug with the aviator hat. 2. Mel Brooks doesn't just break the 4th wall he shatters, steps on and grinds it into the ground. 3. The preacher/Liam Dunn also plays in Young "Frankenstein" as Mr. Hilltop. Madeline Khan also had a great role in it. 4. Imagine how much fun this was to make. 5. The line, "You know morons" was ad lib by Wilder. Little's reaction was real. 6. "Look, it's comin' off"🤣 7. Gig Young was supposed to play Jim but showed up the first day drunk so he was let go. Wilder agreed to do this movie for Mel Brooks only if Mel would direct Young Frankenstein for him. 8. Richard Pryor was supposed to play Bart but he was going through his addictions at the time and they thought it wouldn't be a good idea. However, he did some of the writing. 9. Finally, Mel Brooks is the only member of "Blazing Saddles" still living. What's up with the cows? It's Mel Brooks.

[@JimmyRenReacts]

Wow this is amazing! Thanks for those details. I definitely noticed a lot more when I did the edit and rewatched. It’s a movie I can rewatch over again with ease.

[@williamjones6031]

@@JimmyRenReacts Because it's a classic.

[@drigerdranzer7514]

The cows are a movie industry joke. When they announce for extras to only be seen in the background without having any lines it's called a cattle call.

[@johnnehrich9601]

The basic framework of the plot is from the 1939 western comedy, Destry Rides Again. A western town, plagued by outlaws, sends for a new sheriff. Expecting a "shoot-'em dead" guy, they wind up with his son, who appears to be the exact opposite. The new sheriff, though, turns out to be more effective and rids the town of the bad guys, helped by an all-out fight in the street, between all the timid townspeople and the bad guys. Part of the plot includes the saloon-hall madam with a heart of gold, played by bombshell Marlene Dietrich, in fishnet stockings, and with her characteristic German accent. (Dietrich was well-known for wearing a feminized version of a man's top hat and tails, as Lili is shown later on in the movie.) ---- I think it is important to be put Blazing Saddles in context. Movies had long been heavily censored by the Hays Code until it was replaced by the current letter-code rating system in 1969. In the 1939 Stagecoach, the town prostitute and the pregnancy of the other woman could only obliquely be indicated. Bodily functions (and words related to this) like farting or even flushing a toilet (this latter, broken by the 1960 movie Psycho) were taboo. The racial insults that pepper this movie was not allowed in movies, despite them being common in everyday life. So when the censorship was lifted, movies went crazy with their new found freedoms, and a rash of over-the-top zany movies to exploit these followed: Blazing Saddles, Holy Grail, Airplane, Rocky Horror, Naked Gun, Life of Brian, etc. The studio refused to let Brooks make this a contemporary movie, so he made a period movie that broke the 4th wall into modern times. ---- Most people don't get the joke of the title. A blazing saddle would be most unpleasant. ---- Movie is set (supposedly) a century earlier, 1874, when railroad lines were being built all over the west. The trackworkers, however, are supposed to be driving spikes to hold the rails to the ties, but instead whacking the dirt in between the ties. ---- The trackworkers sing a sophisticated Cole Porter song from the 1930's. The cowboys want them to sing Camptown Ladies, about as offensive a song as could be. This song was composed in 1850 by legendary American composer Stephen Foster, but it was intended for minstrel shows, which were a common feature of vaudeville shows of the era. Half-a-dozen white men, in blackface, sat on straight-back chairs aligned in across the stage. They would sing such songs as Camptown Ladies, accompanied on banjos, tambourines, "bones," and "spoons." The singing would be interrupted ever so often by two of men, speaking in racist stereotypical dialect, doing a corny joke. One would ask the other something like "Mr. Jones, when is a door not a door?" The other would repeat the line "I don't know, Mr. Smith, when is a door not a door?" And then the first would say "When it was ajar!" and they would all go back to singing. The trackworkers pretend not to know the song so the cowboys have to demonstrate it, making complete fools of themselves, even though we hear Bart and his friend on the handcar and later Bart tacking up the wanted posters, singing the same song. ---- Beans contain a couple of complex sugars that normally most people don't produce much of the enzyme that breaks them down. Instead these sugars pass to the large intestines, where bacteria act on them to produce gas. In reality, a regular diet of beans will soon increase the body's production of this enzyme and gas ceases to be much of a problem. But then we won't have a joke here. ---- In reality, a large number of cowboys were either Mexican or former slaves. In 1866, Congress authorized 6 regiments of former slaves to help fight the Indians and rebuild the West. One regiment became known as the Buffalo Soldiers. And according to Wiki: "the actual “Lone Ranger” seems to have been inspired by an African-American man named Bass Reeves. Reeves had been born a slave but escaped West during the Civil War where he lived in what was then known as Indian Territory." All of this has mostly been whitewashed out of general American history. ---- The cowboy with the dazzling smile was quite progressive and had marched once with Dr. King. He had a hard time saying all the racial slurs. At one point, Cleavon Little (Sheriff Bart) pulled him aside and said that if he ever used such language off the set, he'd be really upset, but it was okay and necessary ON the set.

[@JimmyRenReacts]

These notes were super helpful. Thanks! Also, Psycho is on next on my reaction queue.

[@johnnehrich9601]

@@JimmyRenReacts One of my favorite movies, among the best of the "non-Hitchcock Hitchcock" movies is Billy Wilder's 1957 Witness For The Prosecution, based on an Agatha Christie story. Has been adapted at three times already with the '57 version by far and away the best. However, the reason I bring this up is it also stars Dietrich. (And unrelated, I defy anyone to guess the ending.)

[@drigerdranzer7514]

18:20 Yes that's supposed to be "wacky tobacco" they smoke. 😉

[@Center1240]

You should either lower your volume a bit, or raise the movie’s sound a bit. Thanks.

[@JimmyRenReacts]

will do thanks

[@drigerdranzer7514]

10:00 I think he have a bed behind the curtain.