Blazing Saddles

Episode 11: Blazing Saddles (1974)

Theme: Mel Brooks Month
Hosts: Oz & Curtis

This week, Oz and Curtis saddle up for Blazing Saddles — the Mel Brooks western spoof that fires off jokes faster than the Waco Kid can unholster, breaks more walls than a Warner Bros. bulldozer, and handles sensitive topics with a level of sharp satire that only Mel Brooks would dare throw at an unsuspecting 1974 audience.

Join your two favorite frontier fools as they unpack:

• Why Sheriff Bart might be the smartest human being to ever appear in a western… and why every resident of Rock Ridge is absolutely, undeniably not.

• How Gene Wilder’s Waco Kid looks drunk, acts drunk, and still shoots straighter than every cowboy in cinematic history.

• The fact that Harvey Korman’s Hedley Lamarr is the perfect villain: scheming, slimy, and constantly correcting people that it’s Headley, not Hedy.

• Why Lily von Schtupp, the Bavarian Bombshell, is exhausted, oversexed, and still manages to steal the movie in under nine minutes of screen time.

• The legendary bean-fueled campfire scene — cinema’s first on-screen fart, and arguably the most important historical achievement in the movie.

• And of course, the final 15 minutes that abandon the Old West entirely and crash into a Hollywood soundstage, a musical set, a commissary food fight, and a showing of Blazing Saddles inside Blazing Saddles.

From candygrams to tollbooths in the middle of nowhere, from punching horses to punching holes in reality, Oz and Curtis ride through Mel Brooks’ most chaotic masterpiece — gleefully celebrating the jokes, acknowledging the tougher stuff with care, and reminding everyone that comedy can be bold and smart at the same time.

Final Verdict:

Oz — 14 Johnsons out of 14
Curtis — 15 schnitzengrubens
Both — Still concerned about the cattle in the Vatican.