Viking Night: Kentucky Fried Movie
By Bruce Hall
November 25, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It happened while I was watching The Kentucky Fried movie, which isn’t really a movie so much as it is the greatest Saturday Night Live episode never made. I wasn’t expecting it, just like I wasn’t expecting the time I set the garage on fire, or the time I dressed up as Captain Kirk for Halloween, split my leg open like a coconut - but still remained in character the whole night. It’s times like these when you have to find the courage to stay frosty and find a fire extinguisher, or at least tie off the wound so you can get that green alien slave girl’s phone number.
So there I was, right in the middle of “Zinc Oxide and You,” laughing so hard I started to see spots. I was laughing so hard I literally couldn’t breathe. I had to stop the movie and clutch my chest like Fred G. Sanford, wondering if I would be found slumped over my desk, killed by a movie that as a child, amused me because the title reminded me of a bucket of chicken. I was determined not to go out that way, so I quickly regained my strength and watched the series finale of Dexter to make sure I could never laugh again.
Problem solved.
Now that I am immune to its effects, I can tell you that Kentucky Fried Movie is the film debut of Jim Abrahams, along with Jerry and David Zucker. If you don’t know who that is, just think of them as “the guys who made Airplane.” If that still means nothing to you, then I am sorry to inform you that you are a horrible person who has no soul. It also stands as a first big break for John Landis, who would go on to killer projects like Animal House, Trading Places, and Twilight Zone: The Movie. Even if you don’t remember it, you need to know that without the success of Kentucky Fried Movie, we would never have had any of those movies, not to mention Top Secret!, The Naked Gun, Scary Movie, and Meet the Spartans.
I know, you had no idea how lucky you were. But you can thank me later - let’s talk about Kentucky Fried Movie.
Like Seinfeld, it’s really not about anything - it’s just 90 minutes of comedy sketches in which a bunch of horrible people do horrible things, or have horrible things done to them. Although the film is held together by a series of fake news sketches, there’s not really a direct connection between any of the stories. It’s sort of like an extended series of exaggerations and non sequiturs - not unlike watching Fox News, but with boobs, fart jokes and ninjas. The film is a rapid fire assault of tasteless, juvenile, misogynistic and fearless jokes that probably get harder to laugh at the older you get. This is the kind of movie you make when you’re young and desperate and because you CAN. Most of the gags are timely pop culture references circa 1977 - namely exploitation flicks, softcore porn, contemporary television - it’s a long list.
Good thing I never matured, because not all the jokes land. My baked in impudence allows me to laugh at “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble,” which I assume to be an extremely dated sexploitation spoof. I’ve never worn a trenchcoat into a movie theater, so the joke went over my head. But the sketch is filled with boobs, so I admit I may have been distracted. Other clunkers include “The Wonderful World of Sex,” an uncomfortably long (har har) goof on “how-to” guides to sex on phonograph, which were apparently once a thing. In my estimation, if you need a record to help you bone your wife, you may have inadvertently created the very problem you’re trying to solve. The sketch itself is more awkward than your first dance at Junior Prom, but on the plus side, Big Jim Slade is a punch line almost worth the five minutes of total hell.
In the “I get it, but only because I am depraved and/or nostalgic” department are "Feel-A-Round," where a movie patron is sexually assaulted by an usher and “That’s Armageddon,” a takeoff on the disaster movie fad of the 1970s. When I was very little I remember being fascinated by The Towering Inferno. But this was before Star Wars, so setting a toy skyscraper on fire and asking me to believe Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were inside qualified as the adventure of a lifetime. Oh, how wrong we all were. Still, it was fun to see Donald Sutherland trip over things, and to watch George Lazenby still delivering wooden lines while Roger Moore was off being the most metrosexual of all the Bonds.
But for me, the highlight of Kentucky Fried Movie has to be “A Fistful of Yen,” the Bruce Lee parody to end all Bruce Lee parodies. Starring Evan Kim (also known as Dirty Harry’s long suffering partner in The Dead Pool) and martial arts legend Han Bong-soo, “Yen” is by far the longest of all the skits, and the one most deserving of your “total concentwation.” I had barely recovered from this when along came “Zinc Oxide and You,” nearly putting me into an unrecoverable laugh-coma. It is literally the funniest thing I’ve experienced since I was in third grade and someone convinced me they invented the chocolate atom bomb and I laughed so hard I hyperventilated and wet-farted in front of the whole class.
That should give you an idea of the maturity level we’re dealing with here. So, if you can handle it, check out Kentucky Fried Movie. It’s almost as funny as Airplane! except it’s unquestionably a hard R-rating (possibly NC-17), contains infinitely more boobs, and will no doubt kill a lot more brain cells. In fact, parts of it just might kill you. If that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is.