8 Great Western Comedies

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-- Kelsey Whipple">Blazing Saddles

Blazing Saddles

Released in 1974, this classic comedy takes place exactly a century earlier, in Mel Brooks's wacky, wily version of the Wild West. Throughout a hilarious plot full of fart jokes and racial tension, a conniving politician (Harvey Korman) and his band of mismatched henchman take on an accidental sheriff (Cleavon Little) and his drunken sidekick “The Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder) over the shenanigans-filled fate of a small town named Rock Ridge. But it isn’t until the people of Rock Ridge build a fake town that things start to get real -- a little too real -- with an ending that uses humor to blend the borders between Hollywood and historical fiction.
-- Kelsey Whipple

The Western genre isn't entirely comprised of spaghetti or John Wayne talking out the side of his mouth: From its earliest days, filmmakers were putting a comic spin on stories set on the dusty trail, with the genre hitting its apex between the mid '70s and mid '80s. We've gathered this collection of comedy Westerns — some you've seen and some you haven't — to watch maybe after you see Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West.

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