The Kentucky Fried Movie

Plot

The Kentucky Fried Movie contains largely unconnected sketches that parody various film genres, including exploitation films. The film's longest segment spoofs early kung-fu films, specifically Enter the Dragon; its title, A Fistful of Yen, refers to A Fistful of Dollars. Parodies of disaster films (That's Armageddon), blaxploitation films (Cleopatra Schwartz) and softcore porn/women-in-prison films (Catholic High School Girls in Trouble) are presented as "Coming Attraction" trailers. The fictional films are said to have been produced by "Samuel L. Bronkowitz" (a conflation of Samuel Bronston and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, but also a spoof of B-movie producer and American International Pictures co-founder Samuel Z. Arkoff). The sketch See You Next Wednesday mocks theater-based gimmicks like Sensurround by depicting a dramatic film presented in "Feel-a-Round", which involves an usher physically accosting a theater patron. Other sketches spoof TV commercials and programs, news broadcasts, and classroom educational films. The city of Detroit and its high crime rate are a running gag portraying the city as Hell on Earth; in "A Fistful of Yen", the evil drug lord orders a captured CIA agent to be sent to Detroit, and the agent screams and begs to be killed instead.

The film is number 87 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies," and is considered, along with The Groove Tube, to be one of the groundbreaking films of the entire spoof and mockumentary genres of film making.

Sketch selection

The film's credits listed the sketches incorrectly, as the writers changed the show order after the credits had been written. On second cut, they corrected this error. The following list is in the running order used in the film:

Background and production

David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams made the rounds of the Hollywood studios with the concept for Kentucky Fried Movie and were rejected by all of them, being told that "audiences didn't like movies composed of sketches." Since the three believed in their material, which they had honed in front of the audiences with their improvisational troupe "Kentucky Fried Theater", they decided to make the movie on their own.

A wealthy real estate investor offered to finance the film if they would write a script. After completion of the screenplay, the investor had second thoughts and decided he did not want to finance the film alone. He said he would try to attract other investors if the three filmmakers would produce a ten-minute excerpt of the film, which he would finance. When the trio presented a budget of the short film to the investor, he backed out.

The prospect of shooting the short film so excited the trio that they decided to pay for it themselves. The ten-minute film cost $35,000, and with it they again approached the Hollywood studios. This time they attached young director John Landis to the project. However, once again, the studios turned them down.

Curious as to how audiences would react to their film, they persuaded exhibitor Kim Jorgenson to show it before one of his regularly scheduled films. When Jorgenson saw the short, he "fell out of his seat laughing." He was so impressed that he offered to raise the money needed to make the full-length version. By having his fellow exhibitors screen the film before audiences in their theaters, he convinced them to put up the $650,000 budget. When released, Kentucky Fried Movie was a box-office success, returning domestic American rentals of $7.1 million.

Home media

Anchor Bay Entertainment released the DVD in the U.S. in 2000. This release is presented in widescreen (1.85:1) aspect ratio and full-frame (1.33:1). It includes commentary by John Landis; writers Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams; and producer Robert K. Weiss.

On July 4, 2011, Arrow Video in the United Kingdom released a two-disc special edition DVD with the following special features:

On July 2, 2013, Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray in a 1.85:1 aspect widescreen transfer. This version includes the original theatrical trailer and the Arrow DVD release filmmaker commentary and Zucker brothers interview.

Critical response

The film received favorable reviews. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 80% based on 30 reviews.

At the time, Variety described the film as having "excellent production values and some genuine wit" but also noted that film was juvenile and tasteless.

Writing three decades later in 2008, Ian Nathan of Empire Magazine calls the film "occasionally funny" ... "in a scattershot and puerile way", and he concludes the film is "smart and satirical but very dated". J.C. Maçek III of PopMatters wrote "The Kentucky Fried Movie is, however, profane, experimental, violent, silly, hilarious and occasionally quite sexually explicit (all of which surely helped its success over the years)."