Director Report Card: John Landis (1977)

2. The Kentucky Fried Movie

Before making comedy history with “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” the trio of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker were just three funny guys with a dream. They had formed a comedy troupe called Kentucky Fried Comedy and, having honed their craft in front of audiences, began to believe the material could make a good movie. When they failed to attract funding from film studios – who didn't believe audiences liked sketch comedy – they decided to finance the project themselves. A ten minute test reel attracted the attention of John Landis, lending the project a director. Together, they would cook up “The Kentucky Fried Movie” and birth a wild, profane, and beloved comedy cult classic.

Being a sketch film, “The Kentucky Fried Movie” doesn't really have a traditional plot. However, a vague concept links most of the segments. The movie is largely devoted to spoofing television and movies. Numerous gag commercials play, along with absurd permutations on regular fare like news broadcast or courtroom shows. The movie segments are often connected by fictional producer Samuel L. Bronkowit, a homage to Samuel Z. Arkoff, the fake trailers and film segments – including a lengthy parody of “Enter the Dragon” called “A Fistful of Yen” – giving the viewer the impression of a packed night at the movies randomly interrupted by TV broadcasts.

Much of “The Kentucky Fried Movie's” humor emerges from violating the traditional rules of the movie-going experience. This instinct is cooked – along with the eleven herbs and spices, presumably – right into the film, as its original title was meant to be “Free Popcorn!” or other slogans that would fuck with theater marquees. Trailers are for fake, exaggerated features. Goofy gags interrupt the story, the otherwise unrelated bits eventually interacting with each other. This puckish desire to mess with what usually constitutes a movie is literalizes in a sketch where a theater usher acts out the scenes on a theater screen to a hapless viewer.

Television is not sparred from this savage breaking of the rules. In fact, TV gets it even worst than the movies do. Special news bulletins are scattered throughout the movie. The paragon of stately television announcements, the news anchor, instead deliver fourth-wall breaking non-sequitur. This is taken even further in the final scene, where the same newscaster can see through the TV into the living room. Regular programming, like a news broadcast or an interview show, are interrupted by malfunctioning equipment, mischievous microphones, or a rampaging gorilla. There's even a degree of subversive darkness here, with mundane topics like a horoscope or a family board game night going in surprisingly fatal directions. This prankish disrespect for the traditional structure and morals of 1970s television, disrupting the norm with wacky or vulgar comedy, shows “The Kentucky Fried Movie's” anarchistic spirit.

The absurd itself, a disruption of the traditional rules of reality, is one of the greatest tools for any comedy. “The Kentucky Fried Movie” certainly has a strong grasp on that. Some of the film's most memorable moments add a degree of extreme silliness to otherwise normal, everyday moments. A spoof of old educational films sees a woman's kitchen completely falling apart once zinc oxide is removed from her life. The chaos keeps escalating, the joke being extended to its most extreme conclusion. The act of a man and woman preparing to have sex suffers many ridiculous interruptions, with no help from an instructional record. The sequence climaxes – har har – with one of the film's best, goofiest gags: A giant bodybuilder breaking through the wall and being accompanied by Eastern European sounding music, for no reason other than the contrast is funny.

When not getting laughs by piling on the silliness, “The Kentucky Fried Movie” utilizes utterly deadpan deliveries to create chuckles. The condensed formats of television commercials act as the straight man, such as in bit about a sleeping pill that's far too effective. Other times, the likes of Bill Bixby or beloved character actor Henry Gibson speak sincere sounding advertisements while utter absurdity plays out around them. A chaotic headache clinic or the morbid laughs of a dead body still being treated like it's living are contrast with the stately and professional nature of these pitchmen. It's another example of how the film overturns audience's expectations of what TV and ads should be, letting the goofy and the ordinary stand-by-stand like that.

A large chunk of “The Kentucky Fried Movie's” runtime is devoted to “A Fistful of Yen.” As they would prove with the later “Airplane!,” the Z.A.Z. team understands the building blocks of a good parody. That would be attention to detail and a sense of respect for the source material. The trio obviously had seen “Enter the Dragon” many times, as their parody progresses almost scene-for-scene through the Bruce Lee classic. Very specific moments, like men plunging their fist into hot rice or the particular way a collection of prisoners are referred to, are hilariously spoof here. Though handicapped by an obviously small budget, “A Fistful of Yen” still endeavors to replicate the look and feel of its source material. Which it does with surprising fidelity.

As they also showed off in their later films, another way to make a successful parody is just to pile in as many goofy gags as possible. If one joke falls flat, the next one that makes the audience laugh will come along quickly enough. “A Fistful of Yen” understands this as well. Easy potshots, at toothless men or Detroit, are quickly followed with more good-natured bits of silliness. Like a random dating game riff – which seems to make the easy joke of mocking Asian names, before subverting that gag as well – or dudes falling over like dominoes. A bit making fun of hidden microphones keeps going and going, hilariously topping itself.  “A Fistful of yen” grows increasingly surreal as it goes on too. The early appearance of a headless body still moving later escalates to a bleeding wall and a wacky ending, parodying another famous film, that just keeps building in delightfully silly ways. The film rarely lets up with the quality gags, keeping the audience laughing.

That commitment to taking an already absurd idea and piling on yet more silliness is what directs the film's other direct parodies as well. “Catholic School Girls in Trouble,” a fake trailer spoofing sexploitation flicks, makes the sexual content so in-your-face – such as when Uschi Digard's “talents” meet with a glass shower door – that it goes from titillating the nethers to titillating the funny bone.  “That's Armageddon!,” a disaster movie parody, keenly observes the cliches of the genre. That would be a star-studded cast playing easily identified roles – a scientist, an indifferent authority figure, the comic relief – and exaggerates them to higher levels. Here, Landis creates a disaster flick that throws in every calamity imaginable, thirty years before Roland Emmerich would just start doing that for real.

If one is going to talk about “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” one must mention the certain dated qualities to the humor. This is a film that throws good taste out the window and with that comes a certain casual attitude towards racial stereotypes. The (wonderfully committed to the bit) Bruce Lee imitator in “Fistful of Yen” exaggerates Lee's accent to absurd levels. A spoof trailer mashes up a “Cleopatra Jones” style blaxploitation heroine with a rabbi. A spoof of Eval Knievel style daredevils is especially tasteless. How offensive these moments are to modern eyes depends on your feelings. Aside from the accents, I don't think any of these jokes are hatefully making fun of different races or cultures. They aren't indictments of racism either and I understand why you might be uncomfortable with them. Obviously, gags like these wouldn't fly nowadays.

Being a sketch film, there are inevitably segments in “The Kentucky Fried Movie” that simply don't work. Two of the weaker segments have something in common. One has an oil company, in light of the seventies energy crisis, finding unorthodox ways of renewing their supplies. The other is a beer commercial catering to Hare Krishna. Both of these jokes were based on relevant events in 1974 but are totally dated today. The beer commercial really only has one joke, the contrast between the Hare Krishna followers and the typical excess of a beer commercial. (Z.A.Z. seemed to find Hare Krishna inherently hilariously, as they also showed up in “Airplane!”) Moreover, while many of the scenes in “The Kentucky Fried Movie” prosper from the fidelity they show to what they're parodying, both of these jokes are a little too dry.

“The Kentucky Fried Movie” represents a hybrid of two comedic sensibilities, complimenting but  different. The Zuckers/Abraham/Zuckers' style focuses on a rapid-fire supply of goofy gags and a complete irrelevance towards everything. John Landis' comedy is darker, more sarcastic and glib, especially in the face of authority figures or violent or macabre subjects. Segments like “United Front for the Dead” definitely seem more like Landis' style than Z.A.Z.'s. (Both are united in their juvenile love in boobies.) Landis' sophomore feature also sees a few trademarks emerging. That would be references to classic cinema, shout-outs to a fictional film called; “See You Next Wednesday,” itself a reference to “2001: A Space Odyssey;” and primates, thanks to an early appearance from Rick Baker as a rampaging gorillas.

”The Kentucky Fried Movie” would not be a massive blockbuster but, due to its low budget, a seven million dollar gross made it a considerably success. The film's real success would stem from the later cult popularity it gained from multiple television broadcast and video releases. It was undoubtedly an influence on later sketch comedy movies, like “Coming Attractions” and “Movie Madness,” and quasi-sketch flicks, like “UHF,” “Stay Tuned,” and “Kung Pow!: Enter the Fist.” More than that, it would give Landis and Z.A.Z. the launching pad to more popular and influential comedies. Though the movie is definitely dated in many ways, I still find it utterly hilarious, one of those flicks I re-watch many times and quote constantly. “The Kentucky Fried Movie” was an influence on my own sense of humor and helped develop my sense of the absurd and ridiculous. [Grade: A-]