This is it! The source . . .

Rating: 10/10 (10 January 2006)

. . . made in 1967, released in 1968, but of such enduring quality it inspired a Broadway musical (2001) and a musical movie (2005). Filmed on a pittance using real Manhattan locations (less than $1 million, cheap even by Sixties standards), THE PRODUCERS almost died unrecognized until it became a cult hit in New York, L.A., Chicago and then, everywhere.
**SPOILER GRAFS: The plot is brilliantly diabolical: a corrupt Broadway producer (Zero Mostel) and his nebbishy accountant assistant (Gene Wilder) deliberately oversell a play with the design to create a flop and keep the proceeds. They hire the worst possible playwright, director, and choreographer and deliberately insult the drama critics. But "Springtime for Hitler" is so hilariously awful it becomes awfully hilarious. The essence of 1960s camp: It's good because it's so bad.
It's hard to overstate just how good Mel Brooks' first movie is. The Manhattan location shooting, though prompted by fiscal restraints, ironically results in a fresh, not cosmetized look of the Big Apple. (Compare this to the 2005 movie, which goes to great lengths to present Manhattan in the "indeterminate past," with every street dressed in circa-1957 cars and Checker cabs.) The premise of a play about "Adolf and Eva in a gay romp at Berchtesgaden" was, if anything, more offensive just 23 years after the end of the Second World War than it is today. Although this is his first movie, Brooks was already a fifteen-year veteran of the comic art, particularly TV (such as GET SMART). Essentially he throws hilarious comic brickbats at all the excesses and absurdities of show-biz and American social standards in the Sixties: among the sent-up are hippies, pretentious *artistes* both gay and straight, nutty Nazis, avaricious producers, trite and overblown Broadway spectacles, and folks who can't do without their blue blankies. A big gamble on Brooks' part, but it played. **END SPOILERS GRAFS.
Even so, it's doubtful that this over-the-top confection would have triumphed without top-notch players. Zero Mostel is spot-on as the blustering Broadway producer forced to seduce little old ladies to finance his shows; this is Gene Wilder's first movie but you wouldn't know it from the dead-certain tone of comic near-hysteria he rocks the movie with. Add to it Lee Meredith as a ditsy Swedish secretary, Kenneth Mars as a Nazi playwright hiding out in lower Manhattan, and the wonderful Dick Shawn as "LSD," the hippie who auditions with a Campbell's soup can around his neck, and I am not ashamed to invoke the old saying, "A comic *tour de force*."
The "deluxe" version of the DVD costs several dollars more but contains an engaging documentary about the making of the movie, and cinema cast notes and stills, goodies that are notably missing from the cheaper, "movie only" version. It's not too surprising that the 2005 musicalized version with Matthrew Broderick and Nathan Lane, while good, is no match for this movie. Enjoy!