United States

The railroad's bound to run right through the sleepy town of Rock Ridge. Land there will be worth a fortune. Only trouble is, the folks in Rock Ridge already own all their land. How do you drive them out? Send in a gang of the roughest, toughest, leanest, meanest men you've got... and appoint a new sheriff you figure will last about 24 hours. But that's not really the plot of Blazing Saddles. That's just the pretext. Once Mel Brooks' lunatic film is under way, logic is lost in a blizzard of gags, jokes, quips, puns, howlers, growlers, and outrageous assaults upon good taste - or any taste at all. Cleavon Little plays the new sheriff of Rock Ridge, the perfect frontier lawman - with one minor flaw. Gene Wilder is superb as the smiling, soft-spoken Waco Kid. Mel Brooks steps out of his director's role to play a lecherous, dim-witted politician. And Madeline Kahn, as Lili Von Shtupp, does a broad send-up of Marlene Dietrich. With a mind-boggling brawl that spills off the set into a neighboring soundstage, Blazing Saddles goes out in a blaze of glory. Somehow, the Old West will never be the same.