Kentucky Fried Movie, The (1977)

2.5 out of 4

Starring: Bill Bixby, Donald Sutherland, George Lazenby, Tony Dow, and a cast of no names

Director: John Landis

Time: 83 mins

It's hard to review a movie like The Kentucky Fried Movie. It is not so much a coherent film as a collection of skits, commercials, movie trailers, and a couple of longer parodies. It is also the first movie involving that trio of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ), who were later responsible for classics like Airplane! (Flying High in Australia), Top Secret, and Hot Shots, as well as the Naked Gun series. This film's title stems from the trio's involvement in The Kentucky Fried Theater, a comedy troupe from Wisconsin. Unlike a lot of their later movies and the many ripoffs featuring Leslie Nielsen, The Kentucky Fried Movie is rude, crude, and, for the most part, actually funny.

With no plot to speak of, here are some of the spoofs, send-ups, and parodies offered in the film:

Catholic High School Girls in Trouble - a raunchy and very funny movie trailer;

A Fistful of Yen - the major presentation, a hilarious send-up of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon and martial arts movies in general;

That's Armageddon - a movie trailer based on Earthquake, featuring George Lazenby (James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and Donald Sutherland in gratuitous cameos;

United Appeal for the Dead - an off-colour sequence that is at once outrageous and very funny.

As is usual for any ZAZ film, the humour is made up of puns, slapstick, and send-ups of movies. There is a fair amount of nudity, as well as many sequences that may offend quite a few people even today. A lot of the jokes don't work, but there are so many of them flying around that those that do work will have you in stitches. Of course, with its structure and lack of linking story, one is reminded of comedy skit shows such as Saturday Night Live and numerous others. What The Kentucky Fried Movie does, however, is go further in terms of boundary pushing than any of the TV versions do.

The cast is made up pretty much of no-name actors, plus some relatively well-known faces like Bill Bixby (TV's The Incredible Hulk) and Donald Sutherland to lend a bit of credibility. Most of the actors and actresses aren't called on to do anything worthy of an Academy Award, but special mention must be made of Evan Kim, who plays his Bruce Lee role perfectly and with relish.

Director John Landis would go on to direct popular comedies like Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, The Three Amigos, and Coming to America, as well as Michael Jackson's seminal music video for Thriller. His comic timing is assured, even if The Kentucky Fried Movie is raw and uneven. I first saw The Kentucky Fried Movie around 1984, and thought it was very funny in parts, but only smile-worthy and even unfunny in others. Sixteen years later, that opinion remains unchanged. It's not quite in the same league as Airplane!, Top Secret or Hot Shots, but if you like this type of film, you will probably like The Kentucky Fried Movie.

(c) Joe Wong (9 July 2000)