Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on various players.
How exactly does this happen? There was a time when Mel Brooks was the best and most fearless satirist and comedian in Hollywood. This is a guy who did both Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles in the same year. This was a guy whose first movie as a writer and director won an Oscar for its screenplay. And the last movie he ever directed was Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which is like Stanley Kubrick ending his career with The Room.
This is going to be a relatively short review because it’s goddamn depressing. Brooks was once incredibly edgy. Blazing Saddles--still funny after 45 years—was incredibly edgy in 1974. Characters said things that were dangerous in that movie, and did it for a laugh. And the guy that wrote and directed that movie ended his directorial career with a “comedy” so timid that it takes not a single risk.
