History of the World, Part I

History of the World, Part I
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mel Brooks
Written by	Mel Brooks
Produced by	Mel Brooks
Starring	Mel Brooks Dom DeLuise Madeline Kahn Harvey Korman Cloris Leachman
Music by	John Morris
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	June 12, 1981
Running time	92 min.
Country
Language	English
Budget	$11 million
Box office	$43,265,425

History of the World, Part I is a 1981 film written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks. As he does in many of his other films, Brooks also gives himself a great deal of time in front of the camera, this time playing five roles: Moses, Comicus the stand-up philosopher, Tomás de Torquemada, King Louis XVI, and Jacques, le garçon de pisse. The large ensemble cast also features Sid Caesar, Shecky Greene, Gregory Hines, Charlie Callas, and Brooks regulars Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Andreas Voutsinas, and influential Irish comedy writer/actor and former Goon Show star Spike Milligan. The film also has cameo appearances by Bea Arthur, Hugh Hefner, John Hurt, Barry Levinson, Jackie Mason, Paul Mazursky, and Henny Youngman, among many others. Orson Welles narrated the film, and briefly appeared on screen in that capacity.

Plot

The film’s story, such as it is, is a parody of the “historical spectacular” film genre, including the “sword and sandal epic” and the “period costume drama” sub-genres. The four main segments of the film consist of stories set during the Dawn of Man, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, and the French Revolution. The film also contains several other intermediate skits including reenactments of the giving of the Ten Commandments and the Last Supper.

The Dawn of Man

The film opens with several scenes depicting the early behavior of man. The opening shot is set to Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, an obvious parody of the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It features ape men standing for the first time...and immediately masturbating in a group (a play on the species name Homo erectus).

We then move on to the DAWN OF MAN section proper. A group of cavemen (led by Sid Caesar) go about their lives as Welles gives out narration. Memorable scenes include depictions of inventing fire, the first marriages (the first “Homo sapiens” marriage was swiftly followed by the first homosexual marriage), the first artist (which in turn gives rise to the first critic), and early attempts at comedy and music, by smashing each other's feet with rocks.

The Old Testament

Moses (Mel Brooks) is shown coming down from Mount Sinai after receiving the Law from God (the voice of an uncredited Carl Reiner). When announcing the giving of the reception of the law to the people, Moses proclaims “The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen...” (his proclamation is interrupted by his dropping and shattering of one of three tablets) “Oy!...Ten! Ten Commandments! For all to obey!”

The Roman Empire

The second act opens with a series of shots depicting comically nonsensical situations of life in first-century Rome such as a column salesman (Barry Levinson), an inventor giving a sales pitch for plumbing, an orgy (attended by Hugh Hefner), and a slave auction. Comicus (Brooks again), a stand-up philosopher, first appears trying to collect an unemployment payment (given out by an unbilled Beatrice Arthur) when his agent Swiftus (Ron Carey, a thinly veiled reference to “superagent” Swifty Lazar) informs him that he got him the best gig in town - Caesar’s Palace. En route to the palace Comicus meets and falls in love with a Vestal Virgin named Miriam (Mary-Margaret Humes) and befriends an Ethiopian slave named Josephus (Gregory Hines). The four rescue a horse from being beaten, only to discover that the horse is the famous racehorse Miracle (the horse figures prominently throughout the film, often rescuing characters from certain death). Josephus, initially condemned to death by a passing centurion (Paul Mazursky) for assaulting Miracle’s owner, is conscripted into the service of the Empress Nympho (Madeline Kahn) as a wine steward when Miriam pleads for him.

The scene at the Palace opens with Emperor Caesar (Dom DeLuise) holding court. He receives treasures from General Marcus Vindictus (Shecky Greene), returned in triumph from his victory over the Spartans at Crete (and not, as the joke plays out, the “cretins at Sparta”), and listens to Comicus’s performance. Comicus starts off well, garnering huge laughs. He soon forgets his audience and begins to joke about tense subjects concerning Caesar, mainly jokes about obesity and corrupt politicians. Dismayed at his friend’s plight, Josephus absentmindedly pours a jug of wine into the emperor’s lap. Caesar is enraged and orders Josephus and Comicus to fight to the death in a gladiatorial manner. Both combatants are obviously unskilled and unwilling to kill each other. The fight ends with both agreeing to fight their way out of the palace. They are assisted in their escape by Miriam and Empress Nympho, who hides Josephus as a eunuch in her rooms, but he is foiled by an erotic dance performed by Caldonia, in honor of Eros.

The group is chased by several Roman soldiers through the streets of the city. The soldiers eventually corner the group when Miracle comes to their rescue once more. The rest of the chase is done on chariot. The group makes for the port with the soldiers right behind them. It appears that the soldiers will catch the group, but Josephus spots a patch of plants by the road that turns out to be “Roman Red,” a word play of the famous marijuana strain “Panama Red,” and begins to burn it. When the soldiers come through the area, the marijuana makes them high, leaving the soldiers incapacitated (and dancing the Lindy hop). The group then sets sail from the port to Judea on a ship bearing the El Al logo. Once there Miriam, Comicus, and Josephus take jobs at a local restaurant while Swiftus goes to scout for gigs.

While waiting tables at the restaurant, Comicus blunders into a private room where the Last Supper is taking place, interrupting Jesus (John Hurt) repeatedly. Eventually Leonardo da Vinci arrives to paint the group’s portrait: the result is shown, with the “halo” behind Jesus’s head revealed to actually be a platter held in place by the broadly grinning Comicus.

The Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition segment is performed in the style of a grandiose Busby Berkeley production. The segment is one long song-and-dance number featuring Brooks as the infamous Torquemada. Several instances of “comical” torture are shown including a spinning iron maiden and “water torture” re-imagined as an Esther Williams aquatic ballet. Jackie Mason has a cameo in this scene as a Jewish torture victim.

The French Revolution

The segment opens with a sequence depicting the squalor of Paris. On the Rue de Merde (literally “Shit Street”) vendors are selling apple cores and rats for food and one vendor is shown selling “absolutely nothing.” Beggars beg from beggars. The next scene takes place in the tavern of Madame Defarge (Cloris Leachman) where a mob of “scum” has gathered to discuss their situation. Madame Defarge rails that “...we are so poor we do not even have a language. Just a stupid accent!” Another plebeian chimes in, “She’s right; we all talk like Maurice Chevalier, honh-honh-honh!” The final line from the scene belongs to Madame Defarge when she announces to the mob of “scum” “...And now, let’s end this meeting on a high note.” She then sings a high A which the rest of the “scum” join. The mob, thus incited, goes on to plot the French Revolution.

Meanwhile, King Louis of France (Brooks yet again) is having a great time at his palace, playing a game of gangbang chess and skeet shooting catapulted peasants. Surrounded by the beautiful ladies of the court whom he frequently grabs, he regularly remarks straight into the camera “It’s good to be the king,” breaking the fourth wall. He also has a snuffbox, but he sniffs like he is using cocaine, after which he says “Everything’s so greeeen...” Eventually, he is warned by his advisor, the Count de Monet (Harvey Korman), whose name is mispronounced by other characters as “Count-da-Money,” as a running gag (and reference to his role in Blazing Saddles as Hedley Lamarr, which was constantly pronounced Hedy), with the news that the peasants do not think that he likes them. He responds to concerns that violence may arise by declaring “I hate violence; it’s the one thing I detest,” while simultaneously skeet shooting using peasants in lieu of clay pigeons. A beautiful woman, Mademoiselle Rimbaud (Pamela Stephenson), approaches the King and asks him to free her father, who has been imprisoned in the Bastille for ten years after for being overheard saying “the poor ain’t so bad” (a possible reference to Charles Dickens’ classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities). He agrees to the pardon under the condition that she have sex with him that night.

De Monet manages to convince the king that he needs to go into hiding and that they will need a stand-in to pretend to be him. In a moment of inspiration Monet claims “You look like the piss boy!”, to which the king replies “And you look like a bucket of shit!” Thus Jacques (also Brooks in a fifth role), the garçon de pisse—whose job it is to carry a bucket in which the royals can urinate—is chosen to impersonate the real king. Later that night, M^lle Rimbaud, unaware of the subterfuge, arrives and offers herself to the “piss-boy” dressed as the king. As she lies supine inviting him to take her virginity, he wryly comments, “It’s good to be the king” (see below), but after he realizes why she has come, he simply pardons her father without requiring the sexual favors. After M^lle Rimbaud and her senile father (Spike Milligan) return from the prison, the peasants burst into the room and capture the piss-boy “king” and M^lle Rimbaud. With the false king’s head in the guillotine, at first the false king believes that he can die like a king despite not living or acting like one. But after seeing the guillotine he asks for Novocaine, to which the French reply “Such a thing is not known to medical science.” The false king says he wants to wait until it is. M^lle Rimbaud says, “Only a miracle can save us now!” The act and the movie proper come to a close with a classic deus ex machina when Miracle suddenly arrives, drawing a cart with Josephus driving. The last shot is of the party approaching a mountain carved with the words “THE END.”

Previews of coming attractions

At the very end of the film, there is a teaser trailer for History of the World: Part II, narrated by Brooks, which promises to include Hitler on Ice, a Viking funeral, and Jews in Space. Unless bringing Josephus to the French Revolution means that Miracle the horse is a time traveller, The Viking Funeral is chronologically impossible, as the viking age was skipped. The melody for the “Jews in Space” song was later recycled by Brooks for the “Men in Tights” musical number in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. The music that underscores the Viking Funeral segment is Vorobyaninov’s Theme, composed for an earlier Brooks film, The Twelve Chairs. The “Jews in Space” sequence is thought by some to be a harbinger of the later Mel Brooks science fiction movie spoof Spaceballs.

Despite this, no sequel has been released, and the “Part I” of the film’s title is merely an historical joke. The History of the World was a book written by Sir Walter Raleigh while prisoner in the Tower of London. He had only managed to complete the first volume before being beheaded. Sequel references occur in other Brooks movies: Spaceballs, according to the character Yogurt, is supposed to be followed by Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money. And in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, in the rap reprise, Robin Hood 2 is mentioned in the lyrics.

Cast

• Mel Brooks - Moses, Comicus, Tomas de Torquemada, Louis XVI of France and Jacques le Garcon de Pisse
• Dom DeLuise - Emperor Nero
• Madeline Kahn - Empress Nympho
• Harvey Korman - Count de Monet
• Cloris Leachman - Madame Defarge
• Ron Carey - Swiftus Lazarus
• Gregory Hines - Josephus
• Pamela Stephenson - Madamoiselle Rimbaud
• Spike Milligan - Monsieur Rimbaud
• Shecky Greene - Marcus Vindictus
• Sid Caesar - Gunga the Caveman Leader
• Mary-Margaret Humes - Miriam
• Orson Welles - Narrator
• Hugh Hefner - Roman outside Temple of Eros
• Barry Levinson - Column Salesman
• John Hurt - Jesus Christ
• Andrew Sachs - Gerard

“It’s good to be the king”

This popular catch phrase comes from its repeated use during the French Revolution segment of the film. Brooks, as Louis XVI, says this blatantly into the camera on several occasions as if to justify the king’s wanton behavior. Brooks also portrays “Le Garçon de Pisse,” the lowly pissboy, who carries a bucket for royalty to urinate into and later impersonates the king. Brooks as le garçon delivers the same line with a sense of surprise when he is able to sample the king’s luxurious lifestyle for the first time. Brooks recorded a hip-hop song of the same name which reached the 67th position on Billboard’s Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. The line would be used by Brooks twice more: once in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, when King Richard kisses Maid Marion, and later in his stage musical version of the film, The Producers, as a lyric in a musical number about a Broadway producer titled “The King of Broadway.”

“It’s Good to Be King” is the name of a Stargate SG-1 episode. In the episode, Jack O’Neill says the phrase to a character who naturally loves being a king.

“It’s good to be king” is the name of a magical buff used in World of Warcraft that is granted to the player’s character after killing the King of the Gordok in Dire Maul North.

The phrase is also used in Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties.

Singer/songwriter Tom Petty wrote a song called “It’s Good to Be King” for his 1994 album Wildflowers.

In the episode of Smallville entitled “Onyx,” Lex, having given his interpretation of The Man in the Iron Mask and proven himself the king, utters this phrase in triumph.

The phrase is also heard in all three Age of Empires games, when a number is typed in during the game.

The line makes an appearance in the description of Monarchy for Civilization III.

“It’s good to be king” was used as a tagline in some promotional materials for the television show The Tudors.

WWE commentator Jerry Lawler named his autobiography It’s Good to Be the King...Sometimes.

External links

• History of the World: Part I at IMDb
• History of the World: Part I at AllMovie
• History of the World: Part I at Box Office Mojo