This is Mel Brooks' first and best film. It combined great writing, outlandish sensibilities and top-notch acting. Everything just worked together flawlessly.

As far as acting goes, this was the first of several brilliant movies for Gene Wilder (followed up by Young Frankenstein, Start the Revolution Without Me and Willie Wonka),though the movie was really the showpiece for Zero Mostel! Mostel plays Max Bialystock, a washed up Broadway producer who seduces VERY old ladies to finance his long series of flops. Wilder is his assistant who helps him plan the ultimate caper---to deliberately produce the world's WORST play and sell 25,000% of it (since it will fail--who needs to pay off the elderly backers?). Unfortunately, despite their finding the worst play imaginable ("Springtime for Hitler"),the worst director and worst actor, it is taken by the audiences as great camp and the play becomes an unexpected success!! And then, the fun begins! This movie is simply great. It is unconventional, but not quite as much as some of my other favorites (such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Strange Brew),so MOST viewers (if they give it a chance) will enjoy this.

Admittedly The Producers is very tasteless but in a triumphant way. In short, The Producers is a comedy classic to me and one of my personal favourite Mel Brooks comedies. The story is a great one about two men who team up to fleece theatrical investors with the worst play of all time- a musical biopic of Adolf Hitler, while the script is constantly hilarious. The gags flow with ease, with the numbers from Springtime for Hitler faring best of all, they are just jaw-dropping. The two leads are wonderful, Zero Mostel as the down-on-his-luck impresario and Gene Wilder as the shy accountant, as is Dick Shawn as the hippy star who takes the lead in the production. Overall, brilliant, tasteless but very funny. 10/10 Bethany Cox

After seeing the musical remake of The Producers it made me appreciate the original all the more. Not even the creator himself Mel Brooks who did the remake as well should have touched the original. You just can't improve on perfection.

Poor Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock once noted Broadway producer, but now the genius behind several flop shows. When things can't get any worse he's about to be audited when drone little accountant Leo Bloom shows up in his office and starts going over the books.

If this had been a Looney Toons cartoon the light bulb would have been over Mostel's head and flashing as Gene Wilder as Bloom explains how with a little creative accounting one can make lots of money off a flop show. Then it's off to go out and try to create the biggest flop in the history of Broadway. Something no one has ever actually tried for in the history of the theater itself.

Certain films are seminal moments in the history of the genre. In comedy two previous ones in my opinion could be It Happened One Night and Some Like It Hot. Both by creative geniuses Frank Capra and Billy Wilder and both radically different films. Mel Brooks put himself in that category with The Producers. And like another genius David O. Selznick spent the rest of his career producing good film, even great ones but never topped his first and best.

All I can say is that when the film opens with that Springtime For Hitler number done in Busby Berkeley style you'll react like Brooks's theater audience did and say he succeeded. But if The Producers teaches us anything it is that flops are born, not made.

Brooks put together a perfect cast in support of Mostel and Wilder. Standing out are Dick Shawn as the method acting Hitler, Kenneth Mars as the crazy Naxi author, and Christopher Hewett as the worst director on Broadway who takes a real liking to Wilder.

The Producers got an Oscar nomination for Gene Wilder as Best Supporting Actor. It won an Oscar for Mel Brooks for Best Original Screenplay.

All I can say is that if ever an award was deserved it was the Oscar Mel Brooks got. It was certainly original.