Have a Bucket of Fun!: THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977)

Satire ran rampant in the 70s. Magazines like MAD and NATIONAL LAMPOON were eagerly devoured by hungry youth disillusioned with the status quo, while SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS kept us glued to our TV sets for must-watch comic nonsense. Moviegoers were treated to such farcical fare as THE GROOVE TUBE (1974), TUNNELVISION (1976), and LOOSE SHOES (1980). But without question, the side-splittingly funniest of them all was THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE.

KFM (as I’ll pretensiously call it) was the brainchild of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, those geniuses behind AIRPLANE! The trio of comic terrorists first got together as college chums in a theatrical troupe known as The Kentucky Fried Theater. Making a name for themselves as unbridled smart-alecs taking potshots at everything in sight, they developed this hilarious gumbo of outrageous skits with the help of a young director named John Landis, whose only previous credit in the director’s chair was the horror spoof SCHLOCK! (1971), which I’ll get around to viewing sooner rather than later (I know you’re all excited about that!)

THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, like everything the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team does, takes guerilla comedy to the extreme. A series of unrelated events, KFM skewers local news, commercials, PSAs (Henry Gibson in a United Appeal for the Dead), TV shows, and movies. There’s some Previews of Coming Attractions thrown in, touting “Samuel L. Bronkowitz” producions of R-rated titillation pics (CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN TROUBLE), disaster movies (THAT’S ARMAGGEDON!!), and Blaxploitation (CLEOPATRA SCHWARTZ). The big set-piece is A FISTFUL OF YEN, a pitch-perfect kung-fu parody with leads that can’t pronounce their R’s (“Total consentwation”), cheesy sound effects, an evil villain bent on world domination, and an insanely funny conclusion.

Filled with groan-inducing puns,non-sequiturs, ethnic humor, questionable taste, silly cameo roles (Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, Donald Sutherland, Tony Dow, porn star Uschi Digard, FAMOUS MONSTERS editor Forrest J Ackerman) and lots and lots of bare boobs, THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE is as edgy as it was when it was first made. It wouldn’t go over well with today’s easily offended, politically correct crowd. The film was a big hit with the “party animals” of the day. I remember seeing it at the movies stoned out of my gourd, like I was most of the time back then. But that was many moons ago, and today I’m…..

Nahhh, I’ll save the true confessions stuff if I ever want to start one of those “personal recovery journey” blogs. THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE  still makes me laugh my ass off! Stoned out of your gourd or stone-cold sober, just watch it and see. Unless you’re one of those overly sensitive types. Maybe you should go watch THE NOTEBOOK or something.