by Rhys Jones.
Spoof Films practically acts as a genre within a genre in which a film makes a humorous imitation of a certain film. Spoof films will typically adopt genres based on its relevance to popular culture at its time and will loosely follow the core conventions, structure and said archetypes in that genre, but will often attempt to subvert the audience with exaggerated slapstick comedy, combined with a variety of other comedic techniques. These films can sometimes have deeper messages encoded within and can be used as a medium to critique or pay homage to the genre they are depicting. However, Spoof Films have seen a major decline in interest from audiences and studios alike. This article will outline the origin, the rise of these films and explore the elements which would ultimately lead to its eventual decline.
The first instance of a spoof film goes as far back as 1905 in which the director would spoof his own film The Great Train Robbery (Edward S Porter, 1903) which was a silent western following a group of outlaws attempting to rob a train. The spoof would be made 2 years later and would be called The Little Train Robbery and would be identical in terms of story and structure, however, would feature children on a miniature train instead. This would be a much more light-hearted and humorous take on the previous film.This is not directly a spoof in terms of straying away from the original film to subvert or its exaggeration of certain aspects but is still seen as the origin of taking a pre-existent set of media and converting it into a more comical and much less serious film.
The earliest forms of spoofs were much more akin to parodies with elements of what would become spoofs. The Great Dictator (1940) directed, produced and starring Charlie Chaplin would be a notable satirical parody set in Tomainia (Germany) under the Regime (Nazi High Command). Despite its satirical nature the film would comment on the social issues which were occurring in Germany at the time. This was before USA’s intervention in WW2 and would be highly controversial due to the US’s long history of Isolationism. The exaggeration of the dictator would be used to highlight the hysterics and psychotic nature of those in power, whilst also ridiculing and making fun of him with numerous gags which would only further this. An example of this can be seen when the dictator is looking at a globe as he contemplates plans to rule the world and become Emperor of the World, then it would be shown to the audience that the globe which he was looking at was an inflatable ball as he proceeds to throw it around the room. This would be done show the dictators ambitions as a childish tyrant but also as an unstable man in a position of power. The first true Spoof films would utilise the spy genre after the success of James Bond Dr No in 1962. The most prominent of these spoofs would be Casino Royale (1967), Our Man Flint (1966) and the TV show Get Smart (1965) which would all loosely follow the story of a typical spy. This would be the start of a trend in spoof films where genres which have cemented themselves in popular culture at that time became parodied and spoofed.
Mel Brooks would be a notable figure in spoof films throughout the 70’s to 80’s by directing numerous spoofs such as Young Frankenstein (1974), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Spaceballs (1987). Despite these films being satire and comedic, the films would be much more light-hearted and behave much more like a tribute spoof as opposed to a parody of the genre it was portraying. These films would incorporate pop culture references, slapstick, punchline and juvenile humour, and often accompanied with juxtapositions throughout to constantly contradict itself. The films would be extremely self-aware and exist in its own reality not following any rules using 4th Wall Meta humour. Examples of this would be in Blazing Saddles where they run off set and start going into other Hollywood sets as they are filming, and in Spaceballs where the antagonist watches Spaceballs to find out what happens next in the plot. This all coincides to subvert and create a sense of absurdity throughout. “Mel Brooks”’ films would be classics in the comedy genre and IMBD would rank Blazing Saddles as the 3rd best comedy of all time, with Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs being in the top 20 too.
Airplane(1980) is considered as one of the best spoof films, which is a parody on the disaster genre at the time popularized by films such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). The film would follow the general plot of Zero Hour (1957) in which the pilot of a plane would become ill, and the main protagonist would have to take over and successfully land the plane. This film would use lots of double meaning jokes, sight gags and have certain instances of dark cynical humour, all with an absurd and senseless undertone. The humour would be enhanced as the actors had no previous experience in comedy and would act out scenes seriously,highlighting the absurdity of the comedy with the deadpan effect making it seem authentic whilst also confusing audiences. Airplane would be a massive success and would be cemented as one of the best comedies of all time. Airplane is ranked as the 2nd best comedy on IMDB and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2010.
The early 90s and 00s would see a different approach to the comedy often resorting to easy and straight forward jokes, lacking the self-awareness which made previous spoof films unique. Despite this spoof films such as Austin Powers (1997) and Scary Movie (2000) would find success. Scary Movie’s success especially due to its extensive use of dark, raunchy and cringe comedy. The film would be a hybrid of Scream (1997) and American Pie (1999) which both saw success at the time. But Scream especially was in itself a form of spoof of the slasher horror genre which surprising would become more of a serious slashers the films progressed, this is also present with the James Bond films which would have much less of an emphasis on slapstick comedy used in many of Roger Moore’s Bond Films and would become more serious in tone in movies like Skyfall (2012) somewhat showing that many studios and audiences had moved on from Spoofs. Films such as Date Movie (2006), Disaster Movie (2008), and Epic Movie (2007) which instead of subverting the viewers, extensively used pop culture references and cheap shots with a smaller emphasis on absurdity and clever gags. Furthermore, it would stray from previous spoof films as it would follow the plot of the film being spoofed so closely that the unpredictability of the film would be non-existent making it much less pertinent as a spoof and much more akin to a montage of cheap and lazy jokes. This would result in a lower demand for spoofs and the genre would disincentivise studios from producing spoofs, resulting in its decline in recent years.
To conclude, the main factors which contributed to the rise and success of various Spoof films were a combination of the subversion and unpredictability these films held in tangent with the extensive use of a variety of gags and comedic elements making the film more entertaining despite the typically weaker plot, which is inherently a part of spoof films. The lack of repetitive jokes and diverting away from the source to exaggerate the absurdity of the film allowed for the film to develop its own identity. This is why Airplane is typically considered to be the best spoof film as the layers of gags on top of gags, despite the serious acting, allowed for a unique and unpredictable story which strayed away from the disaster genre. The ultimate reason why the genre declined in popularity was the predictability which developed through the overuse of fewer unique comedic techniques and the fact that the films would follow the original plot of the films that they were parodying would not provide any reason to watch the spoof over the original. This means that the very aspect which made Spoofs so popular, that being the absurd deviation of the story and diverting of theaudience, would become less present resulting in less public interest.
by Rhys Jones, November 2022.