Mel Brooks names the greatest scene of his career: “I’m really proud for sure”
Mel Brooks has truly witnessed Hollywood transform during his career, which he started in the late 1940s as a writer. By the 1960s, however, he had made his way to cinema, making his directorial debut with The Producers in 1967. The movie, which was controversial upon its release due to its outrageous comedy, which sees the characters try and bring a pro-Nazi play to Broadway, is now widely heralded as proof of Brooks’ daring genius.
Brooks followed it with various other successful films, which he starred in and directed, like The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. The latter two, as well as The Producers, starred Brooks’ close friend Gene Wilder, who brought these films to life with his unforgettable presence. These films are American comedy classics, even if they’ve stirred up considerable amounts of controversy over the years for their content, most notably 1974’s Blazing Saddles.
Using biting satire and comedy to attack potent themes such as racism, the film has often been dubbed as one that simply wouldn’t get greenlit these days, although many modern viewers still love it. It seems as though Brooks wasn’t afraid to offend in his quest to make people laugh and attack complicated issues head-on.
He has made many fantastic movies and television shows containing indelible scenes, such as the Last Supper spoof in The History of the World Part I, which sees Brooks play an annoying waiter who is desperate to take orders. However, there is one scene that he calls his favourite, although it’s not one that fans might expect.
“Let me give you one of my movies that I love. I’m really proud, for sure, of this insane comedy I made called Dracula: Dead and Loving It,” he told Daily Beast in 2013. “Steven Weber is driving a stake through Lysette Anthony’s heart. Mel Brooks is playing Van Helsing. I say to him, ‘Drive the stake through her heart! Hit her hard.’ So he drives the stake through her heart.”
He continued, explaining the brilliance of the scene, “There’s an incredible gush, an incredible fountain of blood that sprays him. He just gets covered in blood. I say, ‘Hit her again.’ There’s an even bigger, 20-foot fountain of blood all over him that comes out of her. And then he’s standing there drenched, the blood dripping from him. He can’t believe it. I say to him, ‘She’s not dead yet. Hit her again!’ He looks at me and says, ‘She’s dead enough.’”
The 1995 film was not received well by critics, nor did it perform well at the box office, but it holds a special place in Brooks’ heart. The movie was meant to be a cheap horror, with Leslie Nielsen playing Dracula, but it simply didn’t hit the mark for critics. Still, Brooks believes that it was more popular with viewers than the statistics suggest. “It was a great scene. It was irresistible for laughs for the audience. It’s one of the biggest laughs I’ve ever gotten in any movie.”
