There really isn’t any ‘official synopsis’ for this film. It’s literally a montage of small comedy snippets, with two longer (10-15 minute) pieces in-between. The small comedy bits range from hilarious movie trailer spoofs (all directed/written/produced by a fake Samuel L. Bronkowitz) to television spoofs as Rex Kramer’s Danger Seeker (be weary of that one if you don’t find racial humor funny), and to sex-driven skits such as the ‘Joy of Sex’ album (wait until the end of that one – it’s absolute gold). All of them combined to create one large feature film.
The two big portions of the film start with a Enter the Dragon spoof called A Fistful of Yen, which takes some of the best parts of Bruce Lee’s film and twists it into warped comedy. Favorite part of that one? When Dr. Klahn (main bad guy) cuts off the head of a traitor then is about to send a CIA spy to the same fate, but hesitates and says, “Send him to Detroit!” See, even Detroit was a fate worse than death back in the 70s. While a little long in the tooth, A Fistful of Yen is actually well done for a parody of Enter the Dragon. Those who have seen Enter the Dragon will appreciate it, but those who have not might miss a lot of humor along the way.
The second ‘big’ skit of the movie is that of a courtroom drama. The premise is that a man has gotten into a car accident and apparently hurt someone or fled the scene of the crime. The insane courtroom antics eventually lead up to the actual perpetrator of the crime, though you will never see it coming. Probably one of the more offensive and slapstick pieces in the bunch, you get to see Wally (the actual Wally) and the Beaver in the jury discussing life. You get to see a man threaten a woman with the penal code (I won’t go into detail, but think about the first word of that phrase and you’ll get what’s involved). You also get to see one of the first feature film performances by the late/great Stephen Stucker, who played Johnny in both Airplane films. All in all, it’s a nice little departure from the quick hits of the film, and thankfully not as long as A Fistful of Yen.
Kentucky Fried Movie is a combination of everything that was bad about 70s films and well placed comedic moments. It’s definitely not on the level of an Airplane! or a Top Secret, but it’s the beginning of three writers’ careers that developed quite well as each movie they wrote went on. You can see a little piece of their future projects with The Kentucky Fried Movie.
Having said that, the Blu-ray portion of this film is mostly bad. While the grittiness of most of what was shot in the feature was supposed to end up gritty and raw, some of the scenes (like A Fistful of Yen) didn’t come out squeaky clean as other Blu-rays. You get a lot of graininess in most of the film that should have been cleaned up a bit or extracted completely. I’m certainly not saying that it’s a total loss, as there are some gorgeous moments in the feature (like the man getting felt up at the movie theater — the scene was pretty clean…other than the man getting felt up). Sadly, the Blu-ray just didn’t come out as good as other Blu-rays I’ve seen. It makes Fox’s Rain Man look gorgeous, which is a bad thing.
As for the audio, it is mastered in DTS and the film’s aspect ratio comes to you in 1.78:1.
Finally, the crown jewel for this release is the features. Here’s what you’re looking at:
• Audio Commentary By Director John Landis, Writers Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams And Producer Robert K. Weiss
• A Conversation With David And Jerry Zucker: A Feature-Length Interview With The Co-Creators Of The Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane! And The Naked Gun About Their Lives And Career, From Growing Up And Starting Out In Show Business To Their Comedy Influences And Spoofing Midnight Cowboy
• Original Mono Audio
The commentary is brilliant, and why wouldn’t it be? Landis (who makes everyone smile) and the boys have a fun time. That’s the best way to describe it. The conversation with the Zuckers is solid, though not as interesting as the commentary (no offense to the Zuckers), but it is informative. The fact that the last feature on this list is ‘original mono audio’ makes me laugh hard. Like that’s a great feature, but because it’s on the box, it’s worthy of the comedy the movie delivers.
All in all, the features are good and they compliment the film really well.
