Blazing Saddles
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Blazing Saddles is a Warner Bros 1974 comedy, directed by Mel Brooks, and starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Mel Brooks and Alex Karras are also featured.
Warning: Plot details follow. The film is a parody of the Western film genre. The story is set in an fictitious locale in the western United States in 1874. Construction on a planned railroad runs into quicksand, and has to change its route, which will cause it to be built near the town of Rock Ridge. Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Korman)--not to be confused, as he often is in the film, with Hedy Lamarr--wants to buy up all the land cheap, but has to cause the townspeople to leave. He hires some thugs to scare them, which causes them to demand that the Governor appoint a sheriff. The Attorney General convinces the dim-witted governor (Brooks) to appoint Bart (Little), an African-American, as the new sheriff, believing this will so offend the townspeople they will either lynch him or they will leave. With his quick wits and the assistance of over-the-hill gunslinger Jim (Wilder), Bart overcomes the initially hostile reception and inspires the townfolk to resist Lamarr's band of thugs. The movie uses some outrageously racist themes, but in a self aware way that successfully manages to mock the racist attitude itself, rather than the race in question.
One of its most famous scenes is of a group of cowboys sitting round a fire eating plates of beans; the soundtrack has repeated, loud evidence of the most notorious side effect of beans.
This film proved to be the most successful western film for years and a comedy classic. In 2000, the American Film Institute listed Blazing Saddles as #6 on its list of the all-time funniest American films.
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