Hi, this is me, your Movie Maniac, one of the professors at the Movie Madness Podcast University. I’m here with something quite disturbing; I woke in the middle of the night with visions of Mel Brooks tap dancing in my head (sugar plums are far more comforting); I also had an epiphany. I finally know what happened between High Anxiety and Spaceballs. Well, History of the World: Part 1 happened too, but that doesn’t count.

In my dream, Brooks was doing the Putting On The Ritz number from Young Frankenstein, complete with the scantily clad Mel Brooks dancers, when like a lightning bolt I knew why I loved High Anxiety and hated Space Balls. Now, be patient I’ll get there…

Earlier in the day, the wonderful documentary, Mel Brooks: Make a Noise, was on Netflix and I couldn’t help but watch it. While enjoying the film an old concern struck me: what de hell happened, as Mel might have said.  That’s when the disturbing dream came in to play. I realized as Brooks was dancing, “harrumph,” that, in the earlier films, Brooks was paying homage. The original movies were always in the background as subtext. In the new films he was making fun, or mocking: Robin Hood: Men in Tights, really?

In Make a Noise, Brooks explains that he sat with Alfred Hitchcock to watch High Anxiety and nervously awaited his opinion. When Hitch liked the film, even commenting on the draining ink from the newspaper seeming eerily like the blood circling the drain in Psycho, Mel was thrilled. With Spaceballs he just kind of asked George Lucas for permission. According to Brooks, in the documentary, all Lucas made him promise was “no action figures.”

Before all you fellow movie geeks get up in arms, I actually grew to like Spaceballs, despite it mocking one of my favorite films: Star Wars. Even worse, is the aforementioned Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I was horrified when I first watched it…horrified I say! Swashbucklers are my favorite genre and to mock them is tantamount to celluloid blasphemy. To this day I can’t even look at a clip of Tights without cursing. I want to find Mr. Brooks and violently shake my finger at him. (H’m, do you think maybe I’m wound too tight?)

I grew up on Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Douglas Fairbanks, et al.. I expected to see an hilarious homage to the original The Adventures of Robin Hood, not just lots of vaudeville style mocking. Certainly Mel Brooks is incredibly funny but the artful crafting of his earlier films seemed to have been replaced by scatological humor and the equivalent of fart jokes, Blazing Saddles notwithstanding.

Lest you think I’m being too sensitive I’d like to bring up some examples. The Court Jester is a wonderful spoof of Robin Hood (and the genre in general). Airplane is about as silly as a film can be but still maintains a loving relationship to the disaster films from whence it sprang. Scream is another great film, that just happens to make it easier for me to watch slasher films, and yet, as “spoofy” as it may be, maintains the integrity of the original.

The last example is Dr. Strangelove. One of the great comedies of all time and also one of the best spoofs. Stanley Kubrick was at his absolute best when directing it and Peter Sellers at the top of his career. Each of these films was wildly funny and yet serious film making. Not to be too harsh, but it seems Mel Brooks should have stuck to the date that brought him.

Having expostulated enough I shall step down from my soapbox and say that Mel Brooks, I love you. Your performance as the 2000-year-old-man is classic comedy at it’s best and your earlier movies are some of the best comedies ever made. I just have one wish. I would love to see you remake Young Frankenstein for the 21st century. That would make up for Men in Tights. Few people have remade their own movies and done it as well as undoubtedly you could. Though you may have to update the humor and enlist a few writers from the hip-hop generation, but I think it would be great!