Movies - The Kentucky Fried Movie

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	Movies - The Kentucky Fried Movie

The Kentucky Fried Movie is an American comedy film, released in 1977. It was directed by John Landis. The writers for the film were David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, the team who would later write and direct Airplane!
, Top Secret!
, and the Police Squad! television show and its movie spinoffs, The Naked Gun films. Among the numerous stars making cameos in the film were George Lazenby, Bill Bixby, Evan C. Kim and Donald Sutherland. Additionally, Hopkido Grand Master Bong Soo Han is featured as the evil Dr. Klahn.

Description

The movie has no unified plot; rather, it consists of numerous sketches. The skits range from poking fun at karate movies to courtroom TV shows, and it also includes the semi-pornographic "Catholic High School Girls In Trouble" skit. The movie features the talents of many former members of The Groundlings theater, as well as some from Second City.

The structure of the film is a parody of drive-in movie fare of the 1970s. Thus, its primary targets are exploitation films, many of them produced by the mythical "Samuel L. Bronkowitz" who seems to be producer for all of the parodies, the most notable being a spoof of early chopsocky movies such as Enter the Dragon
(here parodied as A Fistful of Yen in imitation of A Fistful of Dollars
. There are shorts for women-in-prison movies and a sex comedy, "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble," which contains women's breasts rubbing against clear shower doors and the apparently sexual use of cream-pie throwing). One preview appears for the disaster film That's Armageddon, which lampoons the Irwin Allen genre. Additionally, there are some segments making fun of television commercials from the 1970s and public service announcements, and a parody of a high school science film, Zinc Oxide and You. The short movie parodies are presented as satires of the "Coming Attractions" trailers, and the sustained parodies represent the "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 C-low against a wall. Kramer takes a stance, breathes hard, 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 had a production budget of a mere $65,000 which was extremely low even in 1977. The movie then had an additional $535,000 in print and advertising costs, bringing its total cost to about $600,000. The film would go on to gross about $20 million, making it one of the most financially lucrative films of the 1970s, as well as one of the most successful comedies of all time.

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
, respectively, but both were totally different characters in that film.
Although they don't appear together in this film, Lenka Novak and Marilyn Joi later appeared together in the film Cheerleaders Wild Weekend.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Kentucky Fried Movie ]

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