History of the World: Part I

A run of sketches from the Stone Age to the French Revolution. Mel Brooks wrote, directed, produced and played five parts: Moses, Comicus, Torquemada, King Louis XVI and Jacques. The showpiece is the Spanish Inquisition, staged as an enormous Busby Berkeley production number with Brooks as Torquemada and the torture turned into choreography. Orson Welles narrated each segment. Five days of recording had been booked; he finished in a few hours. The film ends on a fake trailer for a sequel, promising Hitler on Ice, A Viking Funeral and Jews in Space. The follow-up arrived decades later, not as a film but as a series produced and written by Brooks with Wanda Sykes, Ike Barinholtz and Nick Kroll, which premiered on Hulu on 6 March 2023. It opened against Raiders of the Lost Ark and Clash of the Titans. Despite tracking well beforehand it finished at 31.7 million dollars, a disappointment measured against Brooks's earlier hits. Who it is for: viewers who like sketch logic and have no interest in coherence. Who it is not for: anyone watching by current standards. Several jokes are plainly indefensible now, and the quality gap between segments is enormous.