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troperville

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tools

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toys

• Acceptable Ethnic Targets: Mexican and Arab bandits, though the film also takes Refuge in Audacity.
  • Blacks and East Asians too, to some degree, but then that's part of the joke.
    • References this attitude toward the Irish, although only one character seems to hold the view.
  • Once Acceptable Targets: Gays (and this is hardly the only Mel Brooks movie for which this is true!). Refuge in Audacity applies.
• Acceptable Political Targets: Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan.
• Award Snub: Lampshaded. Hedley did risk that Academy Award nomination after all...
• Crosses the Line Twice: Line? What is this line you speak of?
  • Let's just say it Crosses the Line so often it might as well be a game of Ping Pong.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: It would take less time to list the scenes that don't qualify.
  • There's about 10 seconds of the movie about 9 minutes in. That's about it.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The goddamn title theme.
  • They wanted someone "Like Frankie Laine." At the audition, Frankie Laine showed up.
• Ear Worm: The Theme Tune, Lily Von Sthupps "I'm Tired" and the musical number "The French Mistake"
• Ensemble Darkhorse: If you don't finish watching Blazing Saddles with Mongo as your favorite character, then you have no sense of humor.
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: From the song "I'm Tired", the line "Let's face it. Everything below the waist is kaput!" is not as amusing since Madeline Kahn passed away from ovarian cancer in 1999.
• Genius Bonus:
  Taggart: I got it! I know how we can run everyone out of Rock Ridge.
  Hedley Lamarr: How?
  Taggart: We'll kill the first born male child in every household!
  Hedley Lamarr: [after some consideration] Too Jewish.
  • "Mongo! Santa Maria!" Mongo Santamaria was a famous jazz musician.
  • Governor Lepetomane: "Le Petomane" was the stage name of a French entertainer who was famous for being able to fart at will. It's not a coincidence that one of the most famous scenes in this movie is "cowboys farting after eating beans".
  • One would have to be a fan of old American movies to get the following:
  Olson Johnson: Our fathers came across the prairie! Fought Indians! Fought drought, fought locusts, fought Dix! Remember when Richard Dix came in here, and tried to take over this town!?
  • Similarly...
  "You'd do it for Randolph Scott." Scott was the Western hero for decades, but by the time this movie came out, he'd been retired and out of the public eye for ten years.
• Hilarious in Hindsight ("Funny Aneurysm" Moment?): This film got a lot of quoting online after the election of President Barack Obama.
  • Similarly, "MONGO STRAIGHT!" becomes (even more) hilarious when you see Alex Karras in "Victor/Victoria", where he decidedly isn't.
• Memetic Mutation: Mongo only pawn in game of life.
  • Nevermind that shit! Here comes MONGO!
  • "You said rape twice." "I like rape."
• Vindicated by History: A variant as it was extremely successful from the start, but it was derided by critics as crude and dumb, while today it is considered one of the supreme comedy westerns of all.
  • Blazing Saddles was ranked #6 on the AFI's "100 Years..." list of the best comedy films in the last 100 years.
• Weird Al Effect: Western movies.
  • Most of the people the various Johnsons in Rock Ridge are named after. Although Howard Johnson is still pretty well known for hotels.
  • Hedy Lamarr and Randolph Scott.
  • The whole "Stinking Badges" bit.
    • Which "Weird Al" Yankovic then took for his own use in UHF!
• What do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?