The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)
Written by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and directed by John Landis, The Kentucky Fried Movie is an eclectic collection of skits, parodies and bogus commercials, lampooning what you’d see on seventies TV or in the movie theatres of the time. The sketches are fast paced and many feature well known faces from TV and cinema such as Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, Donald Sutherland and Henry Gibson. Some of the parodies may not “connect” with modern audiences who may not get the source references but for every skit that misses the mark, there are at least two others hit the target. Overall, it’s a litany of visual gags, stupid humour and endless puns and wordplay. Just what you’d expect from the team that went on to bring you Airplane! and Top Secret! The Kentucky Fried Movie is at its best when it satirises the movie industry, with such wonderful faux movies trailers as Cleopatra Schwartz; a blaxploitation action movie featuring a foxy African American vigilante and her devout Hasidic Jew partner.
There’s some rather broad humour in The Kentucky Fried Movie. But it also serves quite well as a reflection of cinema and public attitudes of the time. The trailer for the faux porno flick Catholic High School Girls in Trouble, not only crassly raises a wry smile ("More shocking than Behind the Green Door. Never before has the beauty of the sexual act been so crassly exploited!") but reminds us that pornography was on the fringes of becoming mainstream and was seriously analysed by some movie critics. And then there are some dry send ups of public service announcements. In United Appeal for the Dead Henry Gibson speaks at great length about how “death” is the number one killer in the United States and what his charity can do to help those who have died lead a normal life. That's Armageddon, featuring George Lazenby, parodies every Irwin Allen disaster flick made. There’s even an angry Gorilla sketch that includes an early Rick Baker ape costume. And let’s not forget Danger Seekers, the show that follows those intrepid men who live for the thrill of adventure and risk.
However, the movie's centrepiece, A Fistful of Yen, is by far the jewel in the crown. This spot-on parody of Enter the Dragon and the martial arts genre clocks in at thirty plus minutes. The UK government hires Loo (Evan C. Kim playing a Bruce Lee lookalike with an Elmer Fudd voice) to penetrate Dr. Klahn's (Han Bong-soo) mountain fortress and destroy his operation. Loo refuses the mission at first, but happily agrees once he is told “but you’ll have the chance to kill fifty, maybe sixty people”. The jokes are not only obvious takes on standard tropes of martial arts cinema but there’s also a clever deconstruction of the pseudo philosophy and dialogue inherent in the genre (“you have our gratitude”). This is the most obvious precursor to later Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker productions such as The Naked Gun. It should also be noted that the actual fight scenes in A Fistful of Yen are competently constructed and hold up quite well on their own.
The Kentucky Fried Movie is not in any way a sophisticated satire. The humour is far from nuanced or cerebral but it barrels along at a pace, throwing gag after gag at viewers. By the law of averages, whatever your taste in humour, some of them will land. If it’s watched on its own terms and with an eye on the context of the times (IE not being politically correct) then it will entertain. Both the writing team and the director went onto bigger and better things in the years after the movies’ release. But their style and many longstanding jokes were created and refined here. For example we see an early iteration of the See You Next Wednesday gag, common to many subsequent John Landis movies. Also Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker reference their abiding love for The Wizard of Oz at the end of A Fistful of Yen. A theme that later showed up in Top Secret!
