Directed By: John Landis
Starring: Evan C. Kim, Bong Soo Han, Bill Bixby
Tag line: "This movie is totally out of control!"
Trivia: This movie inspired German Director Uwe Boll to make his feature film debut, German Fried Movie
Directed by John Landis and written by the team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (the creative minds behind 1980’s Airplane), The Kentucky Fried Movie is a mishmash of bawdy, often crude media-related skits that are guaranteed to make you laugh.
With everything from commercials (including one for a headache relief medicine starring Bill Bixby) to movie trailers (the best, and most outlandish, being the preview for Catholic High School Girls in Trouble); and morning news shows (during a segment for A.M. Today, the host and a few others are attacked by an angry, somewhat embarrassed gorilla) to educational films (you won't believe how many things are made out of Zinc Oxide), The Kentucky Fried Movie is a collection of short films designed to tickle your funny bone. There’s even a “full-length” feature: A Fistful of Yen, which borrows heavily from both the Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon and 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.
Some familiar faces pop up occasionally; along with Bill Bixby, there are cameo appearances by Donald Sutherland (in the trailer for the disaster film That’s Armageddon), Henry Gibson (presenting the extremely tasteless, but oh-so hilarious commercial “The United Appeal for the Dead”), and George Lazenby (another cast member of That’s Armageddon). Fans of Airplane will spot funnyman Stephen Stucker (aka Johnny in the 1980 comedy) as a court stenographer during the black-and-white docudrama Courtroom (which also features Tony Dow, reprising his role as Wally from the old Leave it to Beaver TV series); and the trio of writers responsible for The Kentucky Fried Movie turn up once or twice as well, most notably as technicians in the final segment Eyewitness News, where they get an eyeful of more than they bargained for!
Landis would go on to make another film much like The Kentucky Fried Movie: 1987’s Amazon Women on the Moon. Of the two, though, I think I prefer The Kentucky Fried Movie. Both films have their moments, but this 1977 offering pushes the envelope a lot further, and much more often, than Amazon Women on the Moon, resulting in a motion picture that’s likely to offend a large portion of its audience.
But even if The Kentucky Fried Movie does make you cringe a few times, odds are you won’t notice because you’ll be laughing too hard.