Film Forum

U.S., 1963
Directed by Stanley Kramer 
Starring Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, and all-star comedy cast
Screenplay by William and Tania Rose
Approx. 163 min.

More clowns than at a Friar’s Club Roast, as Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Edie Adams, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Terry-Thomas and Mickey Rooney—and those are just for starters!—beat each other’s brains out in hot pursuit of buried loot, with inspector Spencer Tracy an interested observer. Our two special screenings will be introduced by James Curtis, award-winning biographer of Preston Sturges, W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, Spencer Tracy and many others, and author of a just-published book on the making of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

A PARK CIRCUS RELEASE

Reviews

“A symphony of slapstick.”
– Roger Ebert

“Mad World is so funny it may discourage other moviemakers from producing comedies for years.”
 – United Press International

“It’s mad, as it says, with its profusion of so many stars, so many ‘names’ playing leading to five-second bit roles, that it seems to be a celebrities’ parade. And it is also, for all its crackpot clowning and its racing and colliding of automobiles, a pretty severe satirizing of the money madness and motorized momentum of our age. When its producer-director, Stanley Kramer, started to do this film, he said he wanted to make it ‘a comedy to end all comedies.’ I’m glad to say he hasn’t quite succeeded, but he has certainly made it one to reckon with.”
– The New York Times

“The rafters ring with laughter. The funniest, fastest, most fantastic and fanciful slapstick comedy that has been seen on the screen.”
– New York Daily News