Saturday 17 December 2011

Review #286: 'The Kentucky Fried Movie' (1977)

Before Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams' success with Airplane! (1980), Top Secret (1983), The Naked Gun (1988), and John Landis' short series of good comedies National Lampoons Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and Trading Places (1983), they collaborated on this "sketch" movie. Consisting of oh-so-very contemporary 1970's cultural tropes, the films mixture of spoof exploitation movie trailers ("You will cream in your jeans when you see..." Catholic High School Girls In Trouble; That's Armageddon; Cleopatra Schwartz), humorous commercials (which includes one quite disturbing, United Appeal for the Dead, that has a family keeping their son after death, showing him involved in everyday family activities), public service announcements and many references to Deep Throat (1972).

The stand out "Main Feature" is a parody of the 1973 breakthrough martial arts film, Enter the Dragon. As was exacerbated in the writers' next effort, the aforementioned Airplane!, the visual gags are sometimes quite brilliant. I first came across this film when I was quite young. I'm not really sure how this would be viewed today. As I mentioned, this is very much a part of the 1970's. But if you love the blaxploitation, sexploitation et al trailers and movies, then there is certainly some fun to be had with these. There's a splattering of double entendre, and a more exponentially greater visual helping of T&A. It is a good comedy sketch film, with the usual quality problems with the format (i.e. not all the parts will be as good as others). And for those who suffer from premature ejaculation, this film comes with... Big Jim Slade.


Directed by: John Landis
Starring: Evan C. Kim, Bong Soo Han, Bill Bixby, George Lazenby
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy



The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) on IMDb


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