Entertainment

Cult Movie: Mel Brooks trilogy the funniest films Gene Wilder made

Gene Wilder as booze-addled ex-gunslinger Jim, The Waco Kid, in Blazing Saddles
Gene Wilder as booze-addled ex-gunslinger Jim, The Waco Kid, in Blazing Saddles Gene Wilder as booze-addled ex-gunslinger Jim, The Waco Kid, in Blazing Saddles

WHEN Gene Wilder passed away earlier this week much was made of his role as oddball chocolate tycoon Willy Wonka in Roald Dahl’s adaptation of his own novel Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.

That’s understandable; Wilder imbued his performance in the 1971 film with a sweetness of nature and an intriguing oddness of character that played a massive part in its gradual growth into the firm family favourite it is today.

Much of the magic was delivered through Wilder’s unique twinkling eyes and his beguiling affability. That world of pure imagination had a trusted tour guide who was truly worthy of a place in the hearts of all who love escapist cinema.

If you think it’s a role any old actor could have carried, just imagine how it might have been had Spike Milligan, Dahl’s preferred choice, been given the nod instead. The great Goon would have doubtless been wonderful but take away Wilder’s whimsy and childlike charm and Willy Wonka would have been left a poorer creation.

Unforgettable as it is, his turn as the Candy Man is just one highlight in a career that delivered some truly fabulous moments of mirth and mayhem. Alongside the equally charismatic Richard Pryor he made some of the funniest films of the 1970s and while material like Stir Crazy and Silver Streak may have aimed a little lower than some may have liked for their laughs, there’s no denying the enjoyment his performance always brought to those who witnessed it.

The cartoonish quality to Wilder’s visage – the piercing eyes framed by that frizz of wild hair – meant he sometimes appeared in films that failed to utilise his natural intelligence but when he was good he was very good and it didn’t get much better than the work he made with his long-term friend and collaborator Mel Brooks.

The trilogy of beautifully realised gems they gave us in The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (74) and Young Frankenstein (74) are untouchable as examples of comic genius. Slick spoofs, eminently quotable and – in the case of The Producers at least – capable of making you think while you guffaw, they have stood the test of time with ease.

Throughout, it's Wilder’s neurotic reactions and always faintly manic energy that make the magic. In The Producers he was the socially inept accountant Leo Bloom who happens across Zero Mostel’s failed Broadway producer Max Bialystock and suggests that if they can suck enough money out of investors to make the worst show ever they get to cream off all the money left when it closes ignominiously.

In western parody Blazing Saddles he was the booze-addled gunfighter the Waco Kid who joins up with a black sheriff (Cleavon Little) for a crazed spoof on Hollywood gun-toting traditions and neat jab at racial stereotypes to boot.

With Young Frankenstein he played the mad Doctor himself, staring beady eyed into the moral abyss and even beadier eyes of Marty Feldman as Igor, his hunchbacked assistant.

That triple-hitter of comic genius is how I’ll remember him. Funny, wild and capable of stealing every scene he did.