The idea of Mel Brooks’ first movie sounds terrible, which was exactly the point. The Producers is the story of a theater producer and his accountant (Mostel and Wilder) who decide to stage a money-losing play to keep the IRS off their backs. They decide to make the most unlikeable production ever so they can grossly oversell shares and pocket the takings. With a script that’s a paean to the Nazis, including the showstopper Springtime for Hitler in Germany, and a lead played by a hippie actor (Shawn) named Lorenzo Saint DuBois (the initials are no accident), how could the plan go wrong? Except it does. Though panned by many critics and initially unsuccessful at the box office, the film won Brooks the Best Original Screenplay Oscar and was later inducted into the National Film Registry. It was also turned into a Broadway musical, which was itself the basis for a 2006 film. — Craig Holden
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