History Of The World Part I (1981)

Five epochs in history are visited: the Stone Age, the Old Testament, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition and the French Revolution ..... but for laughs. Written and directed by Mel Brooks, this often hilariously politically incorrect and unfairly maligned comedy (I think Pauline Kael was the only major critic to give it a good review) may be his last really good movie. Irreverent and often jaw dropping politically incorrect in its humor, it's a movie that would never get greenlighted today without changes to the material. Only Brooks' insane brand of comedy would conceive the Spanish Inquisition as a musical comedy with dancing monks and nuns doing an Esther Williams water ballet while Jews are tortured. And what a great cast of comic actors. In the Roman Empire sequence, Dom De Luise as a debauched baby faced Nero and the great Madeline Kahn as his nymphomaniac Empress show what great comic actors can do to overcome material that could easily have been offensive (and probably still is to some). In the French Revolution, Harvey Korman ("Don't get saucy with me, Bearnaise!") and Cloris Leachman take their small roles and turn it into little comedic gems. Of course, as usual with Brooks, a lot of the comedy is hit and miss but he keeps throwing the gags and punchlines at us so fast and furious that we don't have the time to worry about it. The large cast includes Gregory Hines, Sid Caesar, John Hurt, Bea Arthur, Shecky Greene, Jan Murray, Jack Carter, Paul Mazursky, Nigel Hawthorne, Spike Milligan, Pamela Stephenson and Orson Welles doing the narration.