Nobody had ever experienced a MOVIE like THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE.
Directed by John Landis (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, TRADING PLACES), the film was the brainchild of ‘The Kentucky Fried Theater’, aka Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker, the team behind AIRPLANE!.
At one point, AIRPLANE! was going to be structured like this – a series of spoof ads, coupled with an extended short film (in the case of this film, a send up of ENTER THE DRAGON called A FISTFUL OF YEN). However, the spoof AIRPORT film became more prominent in the creativity and the film became AIRPLANE!
OK, so it’s like this – a series of news items, coupled with mock trailers from that legendary film producer Samuel L. Broncowitz, among them CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE and the now legendary THAT’S ARMAGEDDON, starring one-time Bond George Lazenby.
Now, admittedly the film has become a little dated and today’s audiences might scratch their heads at some of the jokes (some of which are a little un-PC, as witness the DANGER SEEKERS segment with Rex Kramer, but in the context of the moment, it is still one of the funniest moments of daring ever in light of the fact that BLAZING SADDLES did similar three years earlier)
However, I defy anyone not to laugh at my favourite moment in the film, the FEEL-A-ROUND segment, in which a cinema punter experiences the joy of a sex drama in Feel-A-Round, where an usher stands behind him and mimics what’s on screen – you have to see it to believe it!)
The comic tone (or should I say tone-deaf) is set with the opening rendition of THE CARIOCA SONG (originally appearing in a more acceptable version in the old Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers classic FLYING DOWN TO RIO) and what it lacks in contemporary laughs, it makes up for in energy.