Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

[mellow music] Tonight's film is Mel Brooks' 1987 science fiction space opera parody, "Spaceballs."

Brooks produced, directed and co-wrote the film with Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan.

He also plays two starring roles and probably made the coffee on set for the caterers.

"Spaceballs" stars, in addition to Brooks, Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman, John Candy, and Daphne Zuniga.

Among the supporting cast are Dick Van Patten, George Wyner, and Joan Rivers and Lorene Yarnell as the voice and body, respectively, of the droid Dot Matrix.

"Spaceballs" begins, "Once upon a timewarp in a galaxy, very, very, very, very far away," where the evil residents of Planet Spaceball have squandered their atmosphere and plot to steal the air from a peaceful neighboring planet, Druidia.

The Spaceball's president, Skroob, has plans to kidnap Druidia's Princess Vespa during her wedding to the somnambulistic Prince Valium and force her father, King Roland, to give Skroob the combination that will open the protective barrier that encircles Druidia and protects its air.

Skroob dispatches his henchman, Dark Helmet, to carry out the mission aboard the impossibly large starship Spaceball One under the command of Colonel Sandurz.

But before they can kidnap the princess, she runs away from the wedding and escapes Druidia in her Mercedes space coupe with her droid maid of honor, Dot Matrix.

Distraught, King Roland contacts space adventurer Lone Starr and his companion, a half-man, half-dog, mog, named Barf.

Lone Starr's reluctant to accept the job until he learns the fee will be one million space bucks.

By coincidence, the exact amount he and Barf owe to an intergalactic crime boss, Pizza the Hutt.

In their Winnebago, Lone Starr and Barf are able to rescue Vespa and Dot Matrix just as their ship is about to be pulled into Spaceball One by a tractor beam.

As they escape, Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurz pursue them in Spaceball One.

In an attempt to catch up with the Winnebago, Helmet orders Sandurz to pursue their quarry at ludicrous speed and overshoots them.

Meanwhile, the Winnebago has run out of fuel and Lone Starr is forced to crash land on the desert moon of Vega, where he, Barf, Vespa, and Dot Matrix are left stranded with no apparent means of escape.

[mellow music continues] When Mel Brooks decided to produce a movie parody of "Star Wars," and other adventure films set in outer space, he'd already released several movies making fun of different motion picture genres.

The first was "Blazing Saddles," a wild, anything-for-a-laugh spoof of the tired convention of Hollywood Westerns, released in 1974.

The same year, Brooks directed a loving parody of classic Universal horror films, "Young Frankenstein," starring Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle.

Brooks next had fun with pre-sound motion pictures in "Silent Movie," released in 1976, parodied the films of Alfred Hitchcock in "High Anxiety, in 1978, and created a spoof episodic historical epic, "History of the World, Part I," in 1981.

[mellow music continues] Just as he had consulted with Hitchcock before producing "High Anxiety," Mel Brooks obtained permission from George Lucas to make fun of his "Star Wars" trilogy.

Because, he said, he wanted his film to mimic the original as closely as possible.

Lucas agreed, with the stipulation that there would be no merchandising associated with Brooks' movie.

According to Brooks, the reason was Lucas thought, "Your action figures are going to look like mine."

Brooks stuck to the agreement and no "Spaceballs" merchandise ever appeared on the market.

But within the film itself, as you'll see, merchandising associated with the movie is one of the primary commercial activities of the "Spaceballs" universe.

Lucas also had the opportunity to read the screenplay for "Spaceballs" beforehand and liked it so much that he had his special effects company, Industrial Lights and Magic, do the post-production for the movie.

As Mel Brooks later said, "I was playing ball with the people who could have said no."

Lucas later saw the completed film and sent Brooks a note telling him how much he enjoyed it, although he said, "I was afraid I would bust something from laughing."

Despite Mel Brook's stated intention to make his parody a close comic copy of Star Wars, Spaceballs in fact includes many gags based on other familiar science fiction films and television shows.

There are gags based on Star Trek as well as 1968's Planet of the Apes and 1979's Alien.

But Spaceballs also resembles in many ways a host of other science fiction films both serious and comic that arose in the wake of Star Wars in an attempt to imitate or cash in on its popularity.

Recurring tropes familiar from those space operas includes sword fights, a form of one-on-one space combat going back to Flash Gordon.

Sassy robots, renegade adventurers with faithful companions, royalty of various sorts, characters who possess or somehow gain control of some sort of mystical power and costumes and props from any and all historical eras or none at all.

In that respect, Spaceballs is another in a long line of science fiction movies inspired by and modeled on Star Wars.

But Mel Brooks doesn't restrict his spoofing to science fiction films.

As an avid motion picture fan who isn't above stealing good material from wherever he can find it if he thinks it will get a laugh.

Brooks stuffs Spaceballs with scenes and ideas taken from other sorts of films as well.

Fans of Warner Brothers animated Looney Tunes, for example, will know that the Vaudeville routine, the little alien performs in the diner after bursting out alien like from John Hurt's chest, mime's Michigan J. Frog's "Hello My Honey" from the 1955 cartoon, One Froggy Evening.

The scene where Lone Starr, Vespa Dot Matrix, and Barf approached the colossal statue of Yogurt in the underground chamber on the moon of Vega is taken directly from MGM's 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz.

Shot from the front, the four of them clearly recalled the Scarecrow, Dorothy, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion gingerly walking through the emerald chamber as they approached the presence of the Great Oz.

And just as in that scene it turns out that the fearsome visage, that spurts smoke and fire and asked in the threatening voice who they are is in reality, just a facade.

The real person, the Wizard in one case, Yogurt in the other is actually kindly benevolent and more than willing to help them.

Similarly, the big reveal at Vespas second wedding near the end of Spaceballs is lifted directly from Frank Capra's, multiple Oscar-winning 1934 comedy, It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

Colbert plays an heiress, Ellie Andrews who has runaway to marry a man her wealthy father doesn't approve.

Clark Gable plays Peter Warne, a newspaper reporter who finds and follows her in hope of writing a major news story.

But instead ends up helping her survive her travels while falling in love with her.

At the end of the movie, as her father walks Ellie down the aisle to marry the man she chose against his wishes, he tells her that Peter Warne loves her and has turned down the reward offered for her return.

Instead, taking only $39.60 cents, the amount he spent getting her home.

In Spaceballs, King Roland does the very same thing, telling Vespa, Lone Starr has turned down the 1 million space bucks reward for her return and instead only wanted 248 space bucks for lunch, gas and tolls.

Like Ellie Andrews, Vespa takes this as proof that Lone Starr really does love her and she abandons her intended groom to wed the man she really loves instead The critical recept into Spaceballs when it was released in 1987 was decidedly mixed.

Most reviewers acknowledging that as a parody of the Star Wars trilogy released between 1977 and 1983, the film was almost a decade late.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times wrote, "I enjoyed a lot of the movie but I kept thinking I was at a revival.

It should have been made several years ago before our appetite for Star Wars satires had been completely exhausted."

But Ebert seems to have underestimated the durability of the Star Wars franchise and its fans love of parody.

Spaceballs earned $20 million in its first two weeks and ultimately pulled in $39 million in theaters and almost half that in video rentals.

And the film has only become more popular with audiences over the years.

Just think how much Mel Brooks could have earned from the merchandising.

Please join us again next time for another Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm Glenn Holland.

Good night.