Tag: John Landis

Max’s Drive-In Movie – Kentucky Fried Movie

Kentucky Fried Movie Header

The reason I thought about this movie again was I was reading a Quentin Tarantino interview and he mentioned how much he liked it. It is in his favorite movie list. I hadn’t seen it since around 2012 or so. I rewatched it and enjoyed it a lot.

I read about this movie a lot and finally got to see it in the 1980s. It’s close to a rated R Saturday Night Live episode set in a movie with no audience. They have fake newscasts, commercials, movie trailers (Catholic High School Girls In Trouble), and almost everything else. It’s 1970s skit humor very close to SNL with the first cast. Some skits work really well and some skits don’t…just like most skit-based shows. I also would compare some of the humor with Airplane! and Naked Gun. This movie does include nudity and dark humor.

The film was directed by John Landis and written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (who later created The Naked Gun series). You will see familiar faces but not well-known except for a few cameos by Donald Sutherland, Bill Bixby, and George Lazenby. Tony Dow also makes a cameo playing his old character Wally Cleaver in the skit Courtroom.

The Zucker brothers (David and Jerry) and Jim Abrahams were the creative team behind the film. They had originally been performing a live comedy show called “The Kentucky Fried Theater” in Madison, Wisconsin, in the early 1970s. The success of their live sketches inspired them to translate that format into a film. This was going on across the nation along with the National Lampoon Magazine which inspired a different kind of skit comedy than the Carol Burnett Show.

I really hate the word “dated.” This goes back to a modern movie critic saying “Vanishing Point” was dated. Hmmm, a movie set and filmed in the 1970s with a 1970s theme and style…who would have thought that? When you watch a movie like this one…you have to put yourself in that mindset of when it was made. I understand that some comedy styles change but some things are funny…and some are not… regardless of when they were made. In other words, it’s not “politically correct.”

I have seen some “first reaction” videos of this movie from young people who were watching it for the first time. They were very positive which surprised me. Of course, they gave warnings because of the darkness but liked it.

The budget was $600,000 and it made 7.1 million dollars at Drive-Ins across America. I won’t include a plot since it contains different skits.

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Max’s Drive-In Movie – An American Werewolf In London

An American Werewolf In London

Most of the time a comedy-horror doesn’t work but in this 1981 film, it works perfectly. I always come back to this movie. It’s not a parody…but a horror movie that happens to have funny moments. When the movie came out on VHS I bought it. It was also the first movie I bought on DVD. It has aged very well.

If you like horror movies you should like this. I would not recommend the sequel An American Werewolf in Paris…that one doesn’t stack up against the original. This one does have violence, blood, and gore and it’s very effective. The scene in the pub is worth watching the movie. I’ve never felt as uncomfortable for two people in a movie when David and Jack walked into that pub.

Two Americans (David and Jack) are traveling through Europe. They go to a pub (The Slaughtered Lamb) and it’s strongly hinted for them to stick to the main roads on their way out by the unfriendly locals…well guess what? They don’t and soon Jack is ripped to shreds and David is badly scratched by a werewolf. David wakes up in a hospital with Nurse Alex Price taking care of him. That is the nurse I would want.

David starts having horrific nightmares. In the hospital, Jack reappears to David as a decomposing corpse. He keeps telling David that he should kill himself because David will turn into a werewolf and kill others. David goes home with Alex and Jack keeps reappearing and eventually, David does turn into a werewolf.

John Landis had just finished The Blues Brothers and Animal House when he directed this. In two years he would hit again with Trading Places. Rick Baker did the special effects for this movie. The transformation is great and the wolf is perfect. It is the best transformation scene I’ve ever seen. The effects worked very well for me because it felt real.

The music is great. Bad Moon Rising, Blue Moon, and  Moondance are featured. Supposedly Max Landis, John’s son is planning to remake this movie. Personally, I don’t think it needs it. It’s hard to remake a classic.

Plot IMDB

Two American college students are on a walking tour of Britain and are attacked by a werewolf. One is killed, the other is mauled. The werewolf is killed but reverts to its human form, and the local townspeople are unwilling to acknowledge its existence. The surviving student begins to have nightmares of hunting on four feet at first but then finds that his friend and other recent victims appear to him, demanding that he commit suicide to release them from their curse, being trapped between worlds because of their unnatural deaths.

Quotes

  • Dart Player: Go. Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors.
  • David: Yeah. Thank you.
  • Chess Player: Beware the moon, lads.

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  • Gerald Bringsley: [accusing David of his murder] Whereas I am a victim of your carnivorous lunar activities.

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