It's strange what you can find lying around your house. I was told that it was an early spoof film recently and vowed to watch it, without realising that one of my brothers owned it.
I've watched this having already seen the Scary Movie films, the Naked Guns films, Family Guy, American Dad, etc. Shouldn't it seem very tame in comparison to those? I think it stands up well. Also it was interesting to see how laughing at small-minded racism has been around since 1974. The "meta humour" whereby the film jokes at itself and the actors break character must've been a first of its sort. There is a good Hitler joke towards the end.
The film is not as fast-paced as modern spoofs are, and I don't think is a bad thing. It has a chilled-out feel and you don't need to be paying attention to get every joke that's cracked as you do in some 30 Rock episodes. It references a few other films but not that many (IMDB shows that it has in turn been referenced a lot). Some spoof films jump around too much with the references so that you can't build up any sense of the characters. The Scary Movie films fall into the category in which the characters are just means of referencing other films; Blazing Saddles has memorable, funny characters in it.
I'll give this 8/10. It makes you laugh, which is mission accomplished. It broke new ground. It's still worth watching 36 years later.
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