Blazing Saddles Meets Young Frankenstein: The 50th Anniversary of the Year of Mel Brooks

An in-depth look at the 1974 releases of Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein that will leave cinephiles enthralled.

1974 was a busy year for Mel Brooks. Although still recovering after a series of failed projects threatened his career, he pulled off a one-two punch that saw the release of two of the most beloved American comedies ever made: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Although both films are well-known, the stories beyond the making of each movie are less so. How did they come to be, and how did the era’s culture and politics not only permit them to be made, but help them to become enduring comedy classics?

With their riotous parodies of Westerns and classic horror movies, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein were not only hilarious. They played with charged social and cultural themes in an inimitable way, raising the bar for modern comedies even as they reshaped the two genres they were sending up. Blazing Saddles Meets Young Frankenstein: The 50th Anniversary of the Year of Mel Brooks explores in depth the zeitgeist and cinematic alchemy that led to 1974 becoming ＂the year of Mel Brooks.＂

Bruce G. Hallenbeck is an author, actor and screenwriter whose films include Vampyre, Fangs and The Drowned, and whose many books on film history include The Hammer Frankenstein, Rock’n’Roll Monsters: the American International Story and Poe Pictures. Hallenbeck has also acted in such features as Shadow Tracker, Edge of Reality and Project D: Classified. He lives in upstate New York with his wife Rosa, four cats and several ghosts.