A funny film from the mind of Mel Brooks

Rating: 9/10 (9 June 2006)

I didn't see this in a theater when it first came out. This is Mel Brooks first film and although he had won an Academy award for a cartoon and had been a big name in television as a writer and director I don't think he had enough film clout to sustain this in the theaters very long and it probably had a short run on the big screen and disappeared to turn up on late nigh TV movies. It did go on to win Brooks an Oscar for Best Screenplay and a nomination for Gene Wilder as Best Supporting Actor for 1968 but the film was released on March 19, 1968 and it didn't win it's Oscar until April 14, 1969 so it was long gone from the theaters by then. I first saw it a couple years after its release on a late night movie on TV. I immediately loved it in a cult-like way you catch onto some movies. I'd then always look for it to be on TV and catch it every time I could. Brooks of course would go on to direct such classic comedies as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie and High Anxiety in a film career as an actor/writer/lyricist/producer/director. It's the story of a Broadway producer and his accountant who come up with a plan to get enough people to over invest in a play that will close after a single performance that they can walk away with a profit. They have to find a sure-fire bomb in something that would be so offensive it will assure an opening and closing night one time run. They find it in a script by a Nazi sympathizer that glorifies the Third Reich, Cast an eccentric hippy in the lead role and hire a transvestite with a record of ineptness in directing plays to direct and they create the musical Springtime for Hitler in Germany. zero Mostel and Gene wilder lead the cast which includes Dick Shawn, Kenneth Mars, Christopher Hewett and Estelle Winwood. Clever and original for it's time with a nod to 1940's musicals and old vaudevillian schtick. I would give this a 9.0 out of 10.