History of the World: Part I (1981)

Anyone who's seen a Mel Brooks movie knows not to expect normalcy. After all, this is the same Mel Brooks who incorporated Count Basie, Grauman's Chinese Theater and chauffeured limousines into a Western.

Mel has extensive training as a peerless farceur not only from his days as a TV writer (Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" and "Get Smart!") but as writer and director of his own films (Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Silent Movie). Brooks is a comic of the borscht belt variety and his pride and joy is doing any and everything for a laugh, no matter how corny.

The funniest thing Brooks has done, however, is take the covnetions of an established genre (cowboy movie, Hitchcock film, silent movie) and set it on its ear. He was good at it, as his track record will attest to. His biggest successes were always considered to be The Producers and Blazing Saddles and even for comedies they had their challenging moments, dealing as they did with embezzlement and Nazis, as well as racist attitudes and bodily functions. Pretty racy stuff for mainstream comedies of the late '60s/early '70s, but they worked.

Then a strange thing happened: after Saddles, Brooks' films seemed to "play it safe". They were still hilarious, mind you, but the jokes were only kind of "mainstream" funny, without touching on any sensitive topics or embracing the taboos of his earlier successes. No one will deny the humor that he imbued in his mid-to-late '70s work but these were still nowhere the level of passing gas around the campfire. He even went so far as to influence other film makers who brought Brooks' irreverent point of view to blackout skit films (The Kentucky Fried Movie, Tunnel Vision) parodies (Airplane!, The Big Bus) and films that poked fun at serious subjects like death (Burt Reynolds' The End), but Brooks' own work was becoming sparse. Was he running out of ideas?

It wasn't until the '80s when, as legend goes, Brooks was being badgered as to what his next big hit movie would be about. Just to keep the rabble quiet, Brooks announced, "The history of the world"; and so History of the World: Part I came to be...and basically, the film is just about that - however, one should not go into a film with this pedigree for a thorough history lesson. It is, instead, a sporadic cover of various developmental periods of Man's evolutionary history.

And again, such topics are approached wearing red, squeaky clown shoes.

Written by, produced by, directed by and starring Brooks himself, History takes the same path as Irwin Allen's The History of Mankind, which started as a somewhat serious look at the same topic but instead served more as a game of "Spot The Star" than the subject at hand. Rest assured, if you enjoy such films, you'll take unadulterated delight in spotting such luminaries as Brooks, Sid Caesar, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Shecky Greene, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman, Gregory Hines, and British great Spike Milligan. There are also smaller roles filled with comics and comic actors like Ron Carey, Howard Morris, Henny Youngman, Charlie Callas, Pat McCormick, Bea Arthur, Art Metrano, Jack Carter and Jan Murray. There are even some "blink-and-you'll-miss-them" parts for the likes of Paul Mazursky, Hugh Hefner, John Hillerman, John Hurt (as Jesus!) and Brooks regulars Rudy DeLuca, Sandy Helberg and Ronny Graham. Always with an eye for the ladies, he has prominent roles for beautiful (and humorous) newcomers Mary-Margaret Humes and Pamela Stephenson. And yes, that's Orson Welles solemnly narrating as if this were as sequel to History of Mankind.

And nearly every joke, punchline, sight gag, double entendre and non-sequitor told in History will serve as a litmus test of what, indeed, can be made funny. Are there taboos? Is there such a thing as pushing the envelope TOO MUCH? Not according to Brooks, who gleefully assaults the viewer with jokes so corny and funny that he's reused them more than once in his films before and since (there's nothing like recycling).

So, this is a return to the rude side of Mel Brooks, you ask, but is it funny? Let's just say that it depends on your sense of humor and whether you like an occasional dirty joke. There are plenty of attacks on good taste here; even before the title card, there's a masturbation joke. And very soon after, there's jokes about eunuchs, virgins, marijuana and cocaine usage, circumcision, two or three jokes about urination and liberal use of four-letter, six-letter, ten-letter and twelve-letter words. If your ears can take it, they'll be burning by the end.

As far as racism goes, Brooks gives it another try as he did in Saddles, poking fun at every race, creed and color he comes across. There are the expected Jew and Nazi jokes, but also jokes about colored people, white folks, the French, Christians, Romans, homosexuals, the overweight, nymphomaniacs, virgins, pompus authority figures, leaders of society, the elderly, you name it.

Hines takes over the Cleavon Little "token black person" role but adds some softshoe, funny voices, twisted faces and the occasional cry of "the guy was dead when I got there!". If he appears a little weaker compared to Little in Saddles, keep in mind that Saddles had no less than Richard Pryor as a co-writer (Pryor was supposed to play Hines' part here but suffered from his infamous free-basing accident before filming could start). Hines gave it all he had, though, and shines throughout. 1981 seemed to be a good year for him; he also had a featured part in the horror movie Wolfen.

Yes, I found History to be extremely funny; the only complaint I had is that maybe some segments were too short (only ONE part of "The Old Testament" is featured, albeit a good one) and others a tad too long ("The French Revolution" could have been a few minute shorter). That's a mild quibble, though; there are jokes big and small, slapstick scenes galore and even time for a showstopping musical number about "The Inquisition" and its sadistic leader Torquemada ("You can't Torquemada anything!"). And enjoying the laughs that he serves up here doesn't necessarily make you a racist or subversive - certainly the shots Brooks makes here are no more nor less rude than you'd find in your typical Monty Python movie (certainly History would make a great double-bill with Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life).

Brooks certainly did it all here and showed (on a grand scale) that there were still plenty of jokes left in him. Indeed, History made back almost THREE TIMES its $11 million budget , so that should tell you something about how much people were looking forward to Mel Brooks coming back to true form.

In later years, however, his work became less and less and the films he directed ranged from slightly-to-moderately successful (Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men In Tights, Dracula: Dead And Loving It) to virtually unseen (Life Stinks), which is a shame considering that this was once a man that the world looked to for the belly laughs to end all belly laughs. Since he's returned to his height of hilarity with the Broadway version of his classic The Producers, Brooks may yet have more surprises for us. I hold out endless hope for the man who showed that there is truly humor in every facet of life.

Even in our own History.