The Kentucky Fried Movie

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US movie poster

The Kentucky Fried Movie is an American comedy film, released in 1977 and directed by John Landis. The film's writers were David and Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams. This same team would go on to write and direct Airplane!, Top Secret!, and the Police Squad! television show and its movie spinoffs, The Naked Gun films. Among the numerous cameo stars were George Lazenby, Bill Bixby, Tony Dow, Evan C. Kim, Donald Sutherland, the voice of Shadoe Stevens, and hapkido Grand Master Bong Soo Han as the evil Dr. Klahn. The movie features the talents of many former members of The Groundlings theater, as well as some from Second City.

This film is number 87 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".

1 Description
- 1.1 Sketch Selection
2 Trivia
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Description

Kentucky Fried Movie has no unified plot; it consists of numerous sketches that parody 1970s TV commercials, drive-in movies and educational films shown in schools. The skits poke fun at karate movies, courtroom TV shows, women-in-prison movies, and pornography (or more specifically, advertising for pornography).

A common target of these sketches is exploitation films, many of them produced by the mythical "Samuel L. Bronkowitz" (a conflation of Samuel Bronston and Joseph L. Mankiewicz) who seems to be producer for all of the parodies. For example, a spoof of early martial arts movies such as Enter the Dragon is parodied as A Fistful of Yen in imitation of A Fistful of Dollars. A Fistful of Yen is the longest sketch in the movie.

One preview appears for the disaster film That's Armageddon lampoons the Irwin Allen genre. Some segments make fun of television commercials from the 1970s, public service announcements, and high school science films (Zinc Oxide and You). Short movie parodies are presented as satires of "Coming Attractions" trailers, and longer parodies represent "feature" films. The city of Detroit and its high crime rate are a part of a running gag throughout the clips, each reference jokingly portraying the city as a sort of hell-on-Earth.

Another notable parody in the film is Rex Kramer, Danger Seeker. Part-time airline mechanic, full-time daredevil Rex Kramer vows to take on the most dangerous situations possible "for the sake of adventure." Kramer gears up in Evel Knievel-like garb and steps across some train tracks to a group of African American men playing Cee-lo against a wall. Kramer takes a stance, breathes deeply, screams "NIIIGGERRRRSSSSS!!" and runs away, the group hot on his heels.

Zinc Oxide and You is the spoof of a high school science film. The plot is straightforward - as the announcer intones "without zinc oxide, you would not have ...", then there is a "ding" and the noted object disappears, with successively more disastrous results. The results can be guessed at from the title of the next film (introduced but not shown), which is "Rebuilding your Home".

The film's original production budget was $650,000 and later increased to $1,000,000 after post-production costs were added in. The film grossed about $20 million, making it one of the most financially lucrative films of the 1970s, and one of the most successful comedies of all time.

[edit] Sketch Selection

The film's credits listed the sketches incorrectly, as the writers changed the order after the credits had been written. The following list is in the running order used in the film:

11 O'Clock News (Part 1) (:04)
Argon Oil (1:13)
A.M. Today (6:05)
His New Car (:24)
Catholic High School Girls In Trouble (2:00)
(See You Next Wednesday in) Feel-A-Round (4:52)
Nytex P.M. (:35)
High Adventure (3:01)
11 O'Clock News (Part 2) (:05)
Headache Clinic (:40)
Household Odors (:40)
The Wonderful World of Sex (4:55)
A Fistful of Yen (31:34)
Willer Beer (:58)
11 O'Clock News (Part 3) (:05)
Scot Free (:58)
That’s Armageddon (2:17)
United Appeal For the Dead (1:42)
"Courtroom" (Part 1) (4:35)
Nesson Oil (:14)
"Courtroom" (Part 2) (3:02)
Cleopatra Schwartz (1:24)
Zinc Oxide and You (1:59)
"Danger Seekers" (1:02)
Eyewitness News (4:24)
11 O'Clock News (Part 4)(:09)

[edit] Trivia

The character names of Rex Kramer (from the "Danger Seekers" sketch) and Steve McCroskey (from the "Courtroom" sketch), would resurface in Airplane!, played by Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges, but as different characters.
Although they do not appear together in this film, Lenka Novak and Marilyn Joi later appeared together in the film Cheerleaders Wild Weekend.
Some consider Amazon Women on the Moon the sequel to this movie, due to the similar style of the two films and John Landis' involvement as a director of a few sketches. This is evident in the French title of the film "The Hamburger Movie".
In a scene from A Fistful of Yen, Loo tries to give complex instructions to a dog, which just looks at him bewildered. A still of the confused dog has become a familiar cliché on internet message boards.
In one scene of the same episode the actress that led Loo to the fortress couldn't stop laughing. This is when Loo tries to tell the kidnapped Ada Gronic with gesture that he will save her. After several takes they decided to simply use a take where she obviously suppresses a grin.
Despite taking place in Hong Kong, the majority of the actors in A Fistful Of Yen are Korean. Whenever a foreign language is spoken, Korean is used. Several of Klahn's henchmen are named for Korean foods, like Kimchee and Jjajjangmyun.
Not only does Klahn read out a Korean menu in the guise of calling out his guards, in his Korean monologue, Bong Soo Han is actually expressing his misgivings about the director's wishes for him to speak random gibberish without a script and also expresses doubt over the quality of the production as a whole.