The Kentucky Fried Movie, released in 1977 directed by John Landis and written by Zucker Abrahams and Zucker was a precursor to the latter's spoof hits Airplane and The Naked Gun and is more a collection of sketches than a real movie.
Sadly for me, most the sketches were misses including the movies "legendary" centerpiece 'A Fistful Of Yen' which takes up over half an hour of the films 83 minute running time.
I just found a lot of the jokes falling flat - a newsreader watching a couple having sex isn't particularly laugh out loud amusing and stretched over 4 minutes it gets pretty dull.
And the 'hilarity' of a bloke in a gorilla suit (actually played by Rick Baker fact fans) must be lost on me somewhere.
That isn't to say it's all bad, some of the sketches are hilarious. 'Zinc Oxide and You' is a hoot, and the fake trailer for 'That's Armageddon' (starring George Lazenby and Donald Sutherland as 'The Clumsy Waiter' is a bang on parody of 70's disaster movies.
Funniest segment has to be the darkest also - the 'United Appeal For The Dead' where a family tell of their joy to still have their son in their life even though it's just his corpse. Cue a horrific montage of family activities with a dead child.
I guess in it's time it must have been quite revolutionary but these days it mostly just seems forced in its wackiness.
Both Landis (who managed to get his See You Next Wednesday calling card into the film very easily this time) and ZAZ would both go on to bigger and better things.
**
A very hit and miss affair, leaning heavy on the latter, but shows signs of genius to come.
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