Pretty funny satire of vernacular culture in the 1970s. It takes a whack at just about everything -- the chop sockey movies popular at the time; TV commercials, which is a little like stretching an iridescent butterfly on the rack; public service announcements, soliciting contributions for "New Hope For The Dead" or something like that; Kennedy assassination buffs, a bit tasteless still; TV's "eyewitness news"; and even "The Wizard of Oz." Some of the jokes have grown less accessible with time. At one point an evildoer lays out a nefarious scheme then reaches for the overhead microphone and says clearly, "but it would be WRONG." You have to remember Nixon's Watergate tapes to get that one.
It belongs to a parodic genre that includes Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lilly", to some extent, the first "Casino Royale", and another very similar feature that appeared about the same time and whose name eludes me and is driving me mad.
"Kentucky Fried Movie" is an outrage, an early test of the Zucker brothers who went on to write and direct more successful and equally outrageous movies like "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun." Continuity helps.
It belongs to a parodic genre that includes Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lilly", to some extent, the first "Casino Royale", and another very similar feature that appeared about the same time and whose name eludes me and is driving me mad.
"Kentucky Fried Movie" is an outrage, an early test of the Zucker brothers who went on to write and direct more successful and equally outrageous movies like "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun." Continuity helps.