Mel Brooks Boxset Collection

This deluxe set compiles eight comedies directed -- and in most cases written or co-written -- by funnyman Mel Brooks, whose apprenticeship included stints with Your Show of Shows in the 1950s and a performing partnership with Carl Reiner. The collection is a mixed bag, composed more or less equally of classics, solid entertainments, and disappointing mediocrities. Mels second directorial effort, The Twelve Chairs (1970), was deemed a disappointment by many, although it enjoys a better reputation today. His two 1974 films, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, are widely considered to be his best, and in truth they hold up better than many of the others in this box. Silent Movie (1976), a fascinating but flawed attempt to replicate the slapstick comedy of yore, was Mels first as leading man as well as writer-director. He also took the starring role in High Anxiety (1977), an intermittently hilarious parody of Hitchcockian thrillers, then took a hiatus of several years before returning as part of an ensemble