Genre: Comedy Moving to the opposite end of the genre spectrum and made the year after Scum is Stir Crazy, the classic comedy starring the excellent duo Gene Wilder and Richard Prior as aspiring actors Skip Donahue and Harry Monroe, who find themselves facing 125-years in prison after being framed for a bank robbery. About as far from gritty realism as you'd expect for a Wilder/Prior comedy vehicle, prison life in Stir Crazy is all about the gags, which come thick and fast throughout the movie. It's unsophisticated fun for sure but has some cracking sequences, for instance when the prison guards try to break Donahue's will by hanging him from the ceiling ("My back! My 11 year back problem is cured! Thank you!") and putting him in solitary confinement where he begs them to leave him a while longer, claiming the isolation finally gave him the peace to work through some of his issues. Wilder and Prior firmly establish the comedy partnership which began with Silver Streak and would continue throughout the 1980s. Comedy doesn't come much zanier than Stir Crazy, and while the critics may have panned it at the time it's outlived their criticisms and remains a cult classic to this day - daft, energetic and pleasingly stupid. See also: Take the Money and Run
