The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother 1975  PG, 91 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Gene Wilder
Cast: Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Leo McKern, Roy Kinnear, John Le Mesurier, Douglas Wilmer, Thorley Walters
Sherlock's younger brother, Sigerson (Gene Wilder), is given the mission of playing the foil but, instead, teams up with the police to solve the case ahead of his famous brother.
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 Alice in Wonderland 1999  PG, 90 min.
Genre: Family / Fantasy
Director: Nick Willing
Cast: Tina Majorino, Whoopi Goldberg, Christopher Lloyd, Martin Short, Peter Ustinov, Gene Wilder, George Wendt, Robbie Coltrane, Ben Kingsley, Miranda Richardson
The digital effects and lush visuals of this version of the classic "Alice in Wonderland" is as dazzling as its excellent cast of actors and actresses.
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Another You 1991  R, 95 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Maurice Phillips
Cast: Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Mercedes Ruehl, Stephen Lang, Vanessa Williams, Phil Rubenstein, Peter Michael Goetz, Billy Beck, Jerry Houser, Kevin Pollak
George (Gene Wilder), a pathological liar, is released from a mental institution, and as part of a community service commitment, ex-con Eddie (Richard Pryor) helps George in his transition back into society. When George is mistaken for Beer Baron Abe Fielding, the fun (?) begins. Weak.
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 Blazing Saddles 1974  R, 93 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little, Madeline Kahn, Alex Karras, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Mel Brooks, David Huddleston, Dom DeLuise, John Hillerman, Liam Dunn, Jack Starrett
This is a hilarious satire on Western movies by the master of wacky, Mel Brooks. Ex-convict Bart (Cleavon Little) is offered amnesty if he becomes sheriff of a Western town that is (unknown to the population) about to be taken over by the railroad. Great cast having lots of fun. Madeline Kahn was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
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 Bonnie and Clyde 1967  N/R, 111 min.
Genre: Drama / Adventure
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, Denver Pyle, Gene Wilder, Dub Taylor, Evans Evans, Ken Mayer, Frances Fisher, Patrick Cranshaw, Mabel Cavitt
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway became household names after their much-lauded performances as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker (ruthless bank robbers who terrorized the South during the depression). The film provoked much controversy when released because of its violent content. Estelle Parsons won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and the film was nominated for eight other Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Actress, Actor, Director, and Supporting Actor (Michael J. Pollard and Gene Hackman). This was Gene Wilder's first film.
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But... 1972 R, 87 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, John Carradine, Lou Jacobi, Louise Lasser, Anthony Quayle, Tony Randall, Lynn Redgrave, Burt Reynolds, Gene Wilder, Sidney Miller, Jack Barry, Robert Q. Lewis, Heather MacRae, Elaine Giftos
(Full title: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex * But Were Afraid To Ask) Loosely based on David Reuben's book, seven vignettes are used to showcase topics related to questions most wondered about sex.
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The Frisco Kid 1979 PG, 122 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, William Smith, Ramon Bieri, Val Bisoglio, George DiCenzo, Leo Fuchs, Penny Peyser
A rabbi (Gene Wilder), on his way to a congregation in San Francisco, teams up with a cowboy (Harrison Ford) of dubious character in this Comedy/Western flick.
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Funny About Love 1990  PG-13, 101 min.
Genre: Comedy / Romance
Director: Leonard Nimoy
Cast: Gene Wilder, Christine Lahti, Mary Stuart Masterson, Robert Prosky, Stephen Tobolowsky, Susan Ruttan, Anne Jackson, Jean De Baer, David Margulies, Tara Shannon, Wendie Malick, Robert Hy Gorman, Freda Foh Shen, Scott Groff, Ramy Zada
Liberal political cartoonist Duffy Bergman (Gene Wilder) falls in love with and marries a chef, Meg (Christine Lahti). All goes well–for awhile–until Duffy thinks about having a baby, and Meg wants her career. They drift apart, and Duffy finds another "love of his life," Daphne (Mary Stuart Masterson). Only after Daphne becomes pregnant does Duffy realize how much Meg means to him.
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Hanky Panky 1982 PG, 110 min.
Genre: Action / Comedy
Director: Sidney Poitier
Cast: Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Richard Widmark, Kathleen Quinlan, Robert Prosky, Josef Sommer, Johnny Sekka, Jay O. Sanders, Sam Gray, Larry Bryggman, Pat Corley, James Tolkan
Chicago architect Michael Jordon (Gene Wilder) takes a cab ride with a stranger, Janet (Kathleen Quinlan), who just happens to be on the run from Ransom (Richard Widmark). She is carrying a mysterious package that Ransom wants. Michael tries to help Janet, but she is killed by Ransom, and Michael becomes the prime suspect. Now, Michael teams up with Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner) who helps him locate Janet's package. The search ends in the Grand Canyon where the real showdown takes place.
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Haunted Honeymoon 1986   PG, 88 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Gene Wilder
Cast: Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Dom DeLuise, Jonathan Pryce, Paul L. Smith, Peter Vaughan, Bryan Pringle
Wilder takes fiancee, Gilda Radner, to his family's country home just before getting married (contrary to the title, there is no honeymoon in this movie). The family estate is inhabited by a werewolf, and Wilder must now fend for his life. Few laughs are found in this failure of a comedy.
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The Little Prince 1974  G, 88 min.
Genre: Family / Musical / Sci-Fi
Director: Stanley Donen
Cast: Richard Kiley, Steven Warner, Bob Fosse, Gene Wilder, Joss Ackland, Clive Revill, Victor Spinetti, Graham Crowden, Donna McKechnie
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe provided the musical score for this film about a little prince (Steven Warner) from Asteroid B-612. The little prince visits Earth and is given a tour by an aviator (Richard Kiley) whose plane has crashed in the Sahara Desert. During their excursion, the young prince learns important lessons of life from not only the pilot but from others they meet, including a Fox (Gene Wilder) and a slithery Snake (Bob Fosse) as well.
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 The Producers 1968  N/R, 88 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn, Lee Meredith, Christopher Hewett, Estelle Winwood, Renee Taylor, Frank Campanella, Andreas Voutsinas, David Patch, William Hickey, Barney Martin, Shimen Ruskin, Josip Elic
Mel Brooks won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in this film about two characters, Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), who con people into investing in a non-existent Broadway show: "Springtime for Hitler." Wilder received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. 2 User Reviews
| User Reviews |
| | Parts of this are the funniest movie ever made | 1fatts 03/27/2007 | Mel Brooks is a cannon on the loose. It is his strength and his weakness. The 2000-year-old man sketches with Carl Reiner are classic for Brooks' unpredictable leaps from political humor to burlesque inuendo to bizarre non-sequitur. At his best, he can take your breath away. At his worst, he is a runaway train.
Stand-up comedy benefits most from this kind of wildness; movies suffer most. Movies need plot and structure and discipline.
Brooks' best film, as a work of cinema, is probably Young Frankenstein because Gene Wilder shared writing credit and imposed some order which Mel Brooks simply cannot supply -- see all the shotgun "sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't" humor of "Robin Hood - Men in Tights", "Spaceballs", et al.
But even in a movie that is all over the map (they pretty much run out of central joke and plot in The Producers after the play is a hit), there are a half a dozen scenes that are perhaps the funniest stuff every put on film. Brooks' writing is certainly a major factor, and the other is the casting. Only Zero Mostel was Zero Mostel. He was a life force, a stampede, a landslide. He defined this role . . . and Tevye in Fiddler . . . and Pseudolus in "Funny Thing Happened. . . " Other people may have played his roles, but they were never near the standared. His Max Biolystock is incomparable. His teaming with the young, intensely neurotic Leo Bloom (Wilder), the outrageous Hold Me Touch Me (Estelle Winwood), Kenneth Mars' Nazi, Christopher Hewitt's gay director ("Max, he's wearing a dress."), etc. are the best scenes Brooks has every directed, the funniest filmwork he has ever done.
The first twenty minutes of the film are incomparable. I forgive Brooks all the dead ends and ramblings that may go on elsewhere. I take it as the price we have to pay to be allowed into the near-perfection of the scenes that work.
You can't call youself knowledgeable in comic film if you haven't studied The Producers. |
| | Outstanding | Googleeyes 03/01/2007 | | One of Mel Brooks finest achievements, maybe the best of his achievements. |
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Rhinoceros 1973 PG, 102 min.
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Fantasy / Mystery / Romance
Director: Tom O'Horgan
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Karen Black, Robert Weil, Joe Silver, Marilyn Chris, Robert Fields, Melody Santangello, Lou Cutell, Don Calfa, Lorna Thayer, Percy Rodriguez
People turn into rhinoceroses in a French village in this "theater of the absurd" adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's play. Stanley (Gene Wilder) is the only one noticing the transformation of everyone else.
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See No Evil, Hear No Evil 1989 R, 103 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Joan Severance, Kevin Spacey, Alan North, Anthony Zerbe, Louis Giambalvo, Kristen Childs, Hardy Rawls, Audrie J. Neenan, John Capodice
A blind man (Richard Pryor) and a deaf man (Gene Wilder) work at a newspaper stand in New York. One day, a murder takes place near their newsstand, and guess who is arrested for the dirty deed? The stars are there, the idea is there, but the execution of the film isn't all it could be.
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Silver Streak 1976 PG, 113 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty, Ray Walston, Scatman Crothers, Clifton James, Stefan Gierasch, Valerie Curtin
Gene Wilder plays a book executive, and Jill Clayburgh is a student of art who is in the next compartment on the Silver Streak, a train going from New York to Los Angeles. An art thief (Patrick McGoohan) is also aboard. That combination should cause some excitement; however, it is not until Richard Pryor comes onto the scene that the thrills and laughter are fast and furious. Fun.
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Start the Revolution Without Me 1970 PG, 90 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Bud Yorkin
Cast: Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Hugh Griffith, Jack MacGowran, Billie Whitelaw, Victor Spinetti, Orson Welles, Graham Stark, Harry Fowler, Murray Melvin
Set during the French Revolution, this is a good comedy about two sets of twins who were mixed at birth. Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland take on dual roles for both sets of twins.
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Stir Crazy 1980 R, 111 min.
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Director: Sidney Poitier
Cast: Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Georg Stanford Brown, Barry Corbin, Miguel Angel Suarez, Nicolas Coster, Jonathan Banks, Lee Purcell, Charles Weldon, Joel Brooks, Erland van Lidth, Lewis Van Bergen, Karmin Murcelo
Out-of-work friends Harry Monroe and Skip Donahue (Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder) dress up as woodpeckers to promote a bank opening. Their costumes are stolen and used for a bank robbery, and now they are sentenced to 120 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. From there on, comedy reigns as Harry and Skip frustrate prison officials and finally break out of prison to pursue the real thieves.
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Sunday Lovers 1980 R, 127 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Various Directors
Cast: Roger Moore, Lino Ventura, Ugo Tognazzi, Gene Wilder, Lynn Redgrave, Kathleen Quinlan, Priscilla Barnes, Denholm Elliott, Rossana Podesta, Robert Webber
Four short stories set in four separate countries relate the sexual exploits of four middle-aged men in this tasteless film, which is made worse by poor acting. Directors: Bryan Forbes, Edouard Molinaro, Dino Risi, and Gene Wilder. Wilder's story is probably the worst one.
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 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory 1971  G, 98 min.
Genre: Family / Fantasy / Comedy / Musical
Director: Mel Stuart
Cast: Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear, Peter Capell, Ursula Reit, Gunter Meisner, Leonard Stone, Aubrey Woods, David Battley, Julie Dawn Cole, Denise Nickerson, Nora Denney, Paris Themmen, Ursula Reit
Based on Roald Dahl's children's book, this is a delightful musical about candy-maker Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) who invites five children to share the secrets of his factory. They find their invitations, which are golden tickets, hidden in Willie Wonka's candy bars. Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum), who takes the tour with his grandfather, Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson), is among the five children who arrive at the factory. Once inside, problems befall the children, but Charlie just might be able to escape misfortune and grab the brass ring.
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The Woman in Red 1984 PG-13, 87 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Gene Wilder
Cast: Gene Wilder, Kelly LeBrock, Gilda Radner, Joseph Bologna, Charles Grodin, Judith Ivey, Michael Huddleston, Kyle T. Heffner, Billy Beck, Michael Zorek
Even a parking garage can be a place to meet someone of the opposite sex as an advertising executive (Gene Wilder) discovers. The object of his obsessive interest is a beautiful model (Kelly LeBrock) who is wearing a red dress. The movie is filled with hilarious moments as the previously content, married Wilder tries to find ways for a tryst. Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You" won an Oscar for Best Song.
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The World's Greatest Lover 1977 PG, 89 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Gene Wilder
Cast: Gene Wilder, Carol Kane, Dom DeLuise, Fritz Feld, Cousin Buddy, Hannah Dean, James Gleason, Danny DeVito, Lou Cutell, Candice Azzara
Written by, directed by, and starring Gene Wilder, this is the story of a Milwaukee baker who dreams of success as a heart-throb on the silver screen.
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 Young Frankenstein 1974  PG, 105 min.
Genre: Comedy / Sci-Fi
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Gene Hackman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars, Richard Haydn, Liam Dunn, Danny Goldman, Oscar Beregi Jr., Arthur Malet, Anne Beesley, Monte Landis
This is a great satirical look at Frankenstein as seen through the eyes of comedy when the Monster (Peter Boyle) comes across as a sympathetic creature who elicits many laughs. Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) is the grandson of the infamous Frankenstein and has inherited his Transylvanian estate. He moves in and meets hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman), assistant Inga (Teri Garr), and housekeeper Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). Frankenstein creates his Monster, but Igor has stolen the wrong brain, and problems–and humor–are a certainty. 1 User Review
| User Review |
| | The Most Successful Mel Brooks Movie | 1fatts 11/08/2007 | I think the credit goes to Gene Wilder -- not as an actor, although he is very good in this, but as the co-writer. Wilder shares writing credit with Brooks on this film, and that may be where the disciplined structure comes from in the film.
The film is, of course, zany and contains the requisite number of Brooks silliness, bad puns and misfires, but, as a film, we have a tight, controlled structure. And we end up, because of it, with a true spoof and tribute to the original James Whale movies.
Wilder does a fine job. Madeline Kahn was a wonder. Kenneth Mars does another one of his truly gifted dialect roles. Gene Hackman's cameo as the blind hermit is, hands down, the funniest thing he ever did. Still, my own personal favourite here is Cloris Leachman doing a take-off of Judith Anderson's housekeeper in "Rebecca"/
I can't say it's the funniest Mel Brooks stuff on film -- that must forever go to two or three of the best scenes in The Producers (That's the original; we won't talk about the musical), but Young Frankenstein, taken as a a whole, is the best "film" Brooks ever did. |
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| 1. The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975)
2. Alice in Wonderland (1999)
3. Another You (1991)
4. Blazing Saddles (1974)
5. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
6. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But... (1972)
7. The Frisco Kid (1979)
8. Funny About Love (1990)
9. Hanky Panky (1982)
10. Haunted Honeymoon (1986)
11. The Little Prince (1974)
12. The Producers (1968)
13. Rhinoceros (1973)
14. See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)
15. Silver Streak (1976)
16. Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)
17. Stir Crazy (1980)
18. Sunday Lovers (1980)
19. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
20. The Woman in Red (1984)
21. The World's Greatest Lover (1977)
22. Young Frankenstein (1974)
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