MUMBAI: This month from 24 – 27 September PIX channel’s Great at 8 will air Mel Brooks Special – one of Hollywood’s successful and autonomous filmmakers and some of his best works including, Robin Hood – Men in Tights, Spaceballs, Dracula Dead and Loving it and Twelve Chairs.
Starting on 24 September PIX will kick off the Mel Brooks festival with one his blockbuster Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which chronicles the adventures of Robin Hood in Mel Brooks style. The hilarious version of the original movie is a parody of the idea of men running around in tights in the woods. A parody of numerous Robin Hood movies, the film spoofed the Kevin Costner version in particular. Robin returns from the Crusades to discover that his castle is gone, and all that is left is a blind servant. Robin succeeds in uniting a band of peasants, and then proceeds to battle corruption, save the country, and win the heart of Maid Marian.
Next on – written, directed and starring himself is another Mel Brook classic – Spaceballs a Sci Fi comedy. A spoof on most of the modern day classic Sci – Fi movies, especially Star Wars, Wizard of Oz, Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Alien, this is a complete comic caper. The story revolves around Princess Vespa, who is kidnapped by Spaceballs while running away on her wedding day. Her father recruits Lone Star and his trusty sidekick, Barf, to bring her back home safely, and the trip home is quite an adventure.
Up next on September 26 at 8 pm is the Mel Brooks film Dracula Dead and Loving It! Another masterpiece from this master story teller, this film pokes fun at the Dracula myth. The movie is inspired from the original “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” only it is a complete spoof of the film with Leslie Nielsen playing a perfect vampire on the loose in London.
To end the festival on 27 September is Twelve Chairs that involves a hilarious chase for a fortune in jewels. Directed by Brooks, the film is a complete laugh riot as an aging ex-nobleman of the Czarist regime and the local priest find that the family jewels were hidden in a chair, one of a set of twelve. As the two men Start out on a hunt to Moscow to find the hidden fortune the film takes many twists and turns and Brooks delivers his best.
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York on 28th June, 1926. His comedy career began at an early age with humorous routines that he performed for his classmates at school, routines that he later incorporated into his films. As a young man, Brooks worked at various jobs at resorts in the Catskills before changing his name to avoid identification with a well-known musician of the time, Max Kaminsky. He attended Virginia Military Institute in 1944, and from 1944 to 1946 he served with the U.S. Army in a combat engineering group in Europe.
