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If you ever needed proof of how pop culture’s tastes shift and change with the tides, look no further then the Zuckers. During the 1980s, what some nerds might call the renaissance period of American comedy films, David and Jerry Zucker (and Jim Abrahams) were responsible for what are often regarded as some of the most hilarious films of the decade, maybe even of all time. Airplane!, The Naked Gun series, these movies were like living cartoons, combining slapstick, wordplay, gallows humor, raunchiness and absurdism into madcap adventures where a joke could strike from anywhere and everywhere, and take any numbers of different forms. Films whose scripts were practically built wholesale out of quotable lines, which transformed Leslie Nielsen from an underappreciated dramatic actor into a beloved comic legend without so much as a lateral move, that are so funny that you are always thrown off guard when O.J. Simpson walks on screen. Where Mel Brooks appeared to be slowing down in the 80s it seemed like the Zuckers were gonna be the guys who could pick up the slack into a new era.
Fast forward to 2019, however, and no one really talks about those screwball, madcap style movies anymore. Oh sure, there have been many of them made, like the Scary Movie franchise and what have you (some of which were even directed by David Zucker), but they’re not treated with the same love and affection that those films in the 80s. Far from it in fact, the general opinion of these newer movies tends towards them being hackneyed, unfunny tripe, suitable more for mockery than for any possible enjoyment of their content. What changed? Was there some great cultural shift that turned movie audiences away from the Airplane! type of film, or were the Zuckers so amazing at what they did that other filmmakers felt like there was no point in trying to top them? I can’t say for certain, but while I pondered that question, I decided to take a look at the genesis of this formula that would see so much success in the future.
Released in 1977 and directed by a young John Landis, someone who would also see his greatest critical and commercial success in the 80s, The Kentucky Fried Movie was the debut film of the The Kentucky Fried Theater, the original name for the writing team of David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. Centered mainly around the framework of television & the cinema, including commercials, previews and even a short film, The Kentucky Fried Movie presents a skewed and satirical take on pop culture of the day. Whether it’s the titillating farce of “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble”, or a morning news show that’s interrupted by a gorilla with erectile dysfunction, nothing and nobody is safe when the camera is rolling. Starring Bill Bixby, Donald Sutherland, and everyone’s favorite block of wood, George Lazenby
So The Kentucky Fried Movie isn’t an anthology film, or a collection of vignettes, rather it could be more accurately described as a ‘skit movie’. The closest example I can think of at the moment is the original Monty Python film And Now For Something Completely Different, which was just a collection of sketches from Flying Circus that were remade for the cinema, but even that doesn’t quite describe what you’re getting here. The Kentucky Fried Movie is all about motion, constantly moving towards the next joke as if they were being charged a dollar a minute. There are proper sketches, sure, but there are just as many moments that exist for a single joke and then it’s off to something else. It can be bit a bit overwhelming at first, by the time you’ve finished processing one joke you could already be two or three jokes behind, but at the very least it insures that there’s always something to potentially laugh at.
Of course as a movie, it’s perhaps appropriate that the most memorable parts are those that spoof the popular cinema of the day. There’s the aforementioned “Catholic High School Girls In Trouble”, a sendup of the sleazy exploitation flicks of the day, and a spoof of the Irwin Allen era disaster films like The Towering Inferno called “That’s Armageddon”, but the most ‘developed and arguably best part of the film is its feature attraction, “A Fistful of Yen”. A parody of the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon and to some degree the Bond series, Evan Kim plays the martial artist ‘Loo’, who is tasked by British intelligence to infiltrate the compound of ‘Dr. Klahn’ in order to rescue a Chinese nuclear physicist and save the world from potential destruction. While it unfortunately suffers from some lame racist humor, characters having names like ‘Chow Mein’ for instance, what’s surprising is that in many respects ‘A Fistful of Yen’ has captured the essence of Lee’s films pretty well. Kim has a great physical presence on screen and many of the fight scenes are filmed in long takes with minimal cuts, which end up looking way more impressive than you would expect from a short parody. It is, no offense to John Landis, really the only point in the film where to me the directing really shined, as opposed to the writing.
“A Fistful of Yen” is also the segment that feels the most like what we would see the Zuckers do in the future, and I think therein lies the major issue with the film in hindsight; The Kentucky Fried Movie is the prototype of the formula that would be perfected in later films, so there’s not really much of an incentive to go back to it. Besides gratuitous tits I guess, in case you’re one of those people who don’t know the internet contains porn. I mean there’s still jokes, what would become known as the Zucker formula is there, but the engine just won’t turn over for some reason. I can watch The Kentucky Fried Movie and be amused for example, but I watch a single episode of Police Squad and get more than a couple laughs out of it. Maybe it’s the actors involved, maybe the fact there’s a story structure in later films allows for more concentrated jokes rather than the almost stream-of-consciousness style thing that we’ve got here, maybe it’s because this was made for a 1977 audience in mind and not for someone almost half a century in the future. I dunno, but whatever buttons it pushes for other people it doesn’t push them for me.
If we’re talking historically, as the movie that not only launched the Zucker’s career in film but that of John Landis as well (the success of this film is what landed him the Animal House gig), then I could see why this movie might be of interest. Otherwise, since most folks will probably already be familiar with Airplane! and The Naked Gun, there’s not much here that’s going to be radically different from what you’ve already seen. Aside from “A Fistful of Yen”, which I’d say is worth a watch even if you do it separated from the rest of the film. Play it by ear folks, and you’ll be fine.
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