Video: For Mel Brooks’ Birthday, Reminisce on His Best Movies

Mel Brooks, the man who introduced me to satire, is 85 today. During my childhood, when I wasn’t geeking out over the Star Wars universe, I was eagerly watching all of his irreverent movies — Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety, Spaceballs — and quoting them to anyone within earshot. I wanted to post here a collection of multiple clips, but it wouldn’t embed, so I’m going with the next best thing: A great scene from Dracula: Dead and Loving It that has Leslie Nielsen as the vampire and Mel Brooks in one of his usual cameos, this time as Van Helsing.

In the first few movies, I saw, Brooks made great cameos that must have been a nod to Alfred Hitchcock, though they were much more obvious: Van Helsing, Yogurt in Spaceballs, and multiple voices in Young Frankenstsein. Then I expanded my collection to include the spoofs that starred Brooks, like the Hitchcock homage High Anxiety. Every movie is unfailingly smart and features the same stellar players: Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman.

Many of these actors have died, and I bet that a lot of Brooks’ movies aren’t that well-known anymore. But I invite you to check out the clip above and find his movies, either on YouTube or Netflix, because they are fantastic and never feel dated. (Except maybe History of the World: Part I — but that’s the point!)