Harvey Korman

Mel Brooks's 1981, three-part comedy--set in the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, and the French Revolution--is pure guilty pleasure. Narrated by Orson Welles and featuring a lot of famous faces in guest appearances (beyond the official cast), the film opens well with Sid Caesar playing a caveman, then moves along to the unlikely but somehow hilarious juxtaposition of Caesar's soldiers (the other Caesar, not Sid) with pot humor, and ends on a dumb-funny note in the French bloodbath. This is a take-it-or-leave-it movie, and it works best if you're in a take-it-or-leave-it mood.

Mel Brooks, the unhinged movie parodist whose Blazing Saddles sent us Westward ho-ho-ho and whose Young Frankenstein electrified with mad-scientist nuts and jolts, now stokes the Bram Stoker vein with the comedy transfusion: Dracula Dead and Loving It. Leslie Nielsen plays the title role, and what's not to love? His Count is a pratfalling evil prince of a guy who believes in long relationships. Brooks portrays vampire hunter Van Helsing who won't give a bloodsucker an even break. Stakes, garlic, mirrors and more - they're all part of vampire lore.

Mel Brooks scored his first commercial hit with this raucous Western spoof starring the late Cleavon Little as the newly hired (and conspicuously black) sheriff of Rock Ridge. Sheriff Bart teams up with deputy Jim (Gene Wilder) to foil the railroad-building scheme of the nefarious Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman). The simple plot is just an excuse for a steady stream of gags, many of them unabashedly tasteless, that Brooks and his wacky cast pull off with side-splitting success.