Vulgar, crude, and occasionally scandalous in its racial humor, this hilarious bad-taste spoof of Westerns, co-written by
Richard Pryor, features
Cleavon Little as the first black sheriff of a stunned town scheduled for demolition by an encroaching railroad. Little and co-star
Gene Wilder have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes
Harvey Korman,
Slim Pickens, and
Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on
Marlene Dietrich. As in
Young Frankenstein (1974),
Silent Movie (1976), and
High Anxiety (1977), director/writer
Mel Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre; in his own manic, Borscht Belt way, Brooks was a central player in revising classic genres in light of Seventies values and attitudes, an effort most often associated with such directors as
Robert Altman and
Peter Bogdanovich . Some of this film's sequences, notably a gaseous bean dinner around a campfire, have become comedy classics. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide