User Reviews

Absolutely, unashamedly over the place, with more stuff that worked that didn't. While there were a couple of big laughs, they didn't fully outweigh the jokes that were duds.

Still, there's some of the Abrahams and Zucker Brothers style here that'll get more consistent with Airplane and then The Naked Gun. The Kung fu parody went on way too long, but the scenes with the recording equipment being shown, and then the scene with all the different types of prisoners was also great.

The courtroom skit had some good laughs, as did that woman's life falling apart during a zinc informercial because the narrator kept taking away zinc products. I love creative, stupid, surreal humour like that.

Some 30 years ago, when I was around 12 or 13 years old, "The Kentucky Fried Movie" was the first slapstick/absurd spoof type of film I ever watched. I didn't understand half of the jokes and none of the references towards other movies, but it sparked my interest in crazed-out comedy, and particularly the work of the infamous Z. A. Z. Team. "Top Secret", "Airplane!", "Hot Shots!", "The Naked Gun", ... They're all hilarious and great, but their first feature remains unique.

Quite simply, "The Kentucky Fried Movie" is a collection of short and slightly longer sketches that are all spoofing our beloved visual media. Mostly television (like the daily news, commercials & infomercials, reality-TV, ...) but also cinema (with delightful fake trailers, 4D-experience, and - the central sketch - an authentic film parody). The eccentric trailers are my favorite! What I wouldn't give, being the exploitation and trash fanatic that I am, to see the actual full-length versions of "That's Armageddon", "Cleopatra Schwartz", and "Catholic High-School Girls in Trouble". Without properly realizing, the Z. A. Z. Guys invented the concept of fake trailers for this film.

Some gags are weak and unnecessary overlong, but these are widely compensated by many imaginative situations, (pleasantly) provocative satire, juvenile stuff, and so-stupid-it's-hilarious humor. From a mildly offensive boardgame about a Presidential murder to a downright insane sketch called "United appeal for the Dead". The central sketch isn't my favorite, but it's an energetic and joyous spoof of "Enter the Dragon" and James Bond.

Kentucky Fried Movie is one of those movies that throws so much at you that it doesn't matter if every joke sticks or not due to the sheer number of them. Personal favourites within the movie are the extended sequence that mimics Japanese chop socky films titled A Fistful Of Yen. It is so dead on that I couldn't stop laughing. The previews for the blaxploitation flick Cleopatra Schwartz and Catholic High School Girls in Trouble are also very high up on my list of funny moments from the film. As I said, not every joke works but there are so many of them that you can forgive the ones that don't. Not all the humour is for everyone. You have to keep in mind that this film was made in a time when political correctness just didn't exist. And good on it. Its meant to be funny at all costs and it is. We need more movies like this and less like Scary Movie. What happened to the days when a spoof was funny and not wink wink aren't we clever about it?

Having laughed out loud and throughly enjoyed both Airplane! movies, I decided to see if the comedy genius trio of Jim Abrahams, Jerry, and David Zucker had any more masterpieces. When I discovered Kentucky Fried Movie, I rented it immediately. Well, I'm gonna say that this is my all-time favorite movie and there will never be a funnier movie made. The laughs in this film are non-stop.The whole entertainment and media industry takes a huge satiric beating, including public service commercials, educational films, and everything else imaginable. The best part is the very last scene when a young couple is getting quite intimate on the couch with the news on the tv in the background. The scene actually makes you stop and think that maybe tv isn't so "mindless" after all. Oh yes, and the theme song is a classic also.....I have it ringing in my head this very minute. If you want a comedy movie with an intriguing, serious storyline to go along with it, rent one of the Airplane! movies but if you don't give crap one about a plot and just want to laugh and not think, rent Kentucky Fried Movie.

Some of this is still jaw droopingly funny even if some isn't, but overall it's always trying something wacky so even if a sketch doesn't work it's not on screen for too long. Loads of nudity and tastelessness, this is a chance to see the Zucker's early work and still worth seeing.

If Tex Avery ever would have directed a live action movie, I imagine it would have been something like this. A great early effort by John Landis, with non-stop jokes that are painfully hilarious. The one that always kills me is 'Danger Seekers', one of THE most politically incorrect skits I have ever seen, and one of the funniest.

A bunch of skits spoofing TV shows, commercials, movies, previews etc etc. There's also a long dead on target spoof of "Enter the Dragon" called "A Fistful of Yen". The film is very 70s--some of the references won't make any sense to anyone born after 1977. Also much of the humor is exceptionally crude and there's a huge overabundance of gratuitious female nudity and fairly graphic sex. This film wouldn't be made today and would easily have gotten an NC-17 rating if it had. Still, the film is often hilarious--I laughed myself silly at some of the crudest humor possible. So, it's worth seeing, but if you're easily offended do NOT see it! Also where else can you see Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, Donald Sutherland and Henry Gibson in a film with the coming attractions of "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble"?

As with any other anthology film there are strong, weak, and some passable. The best segment is Fistful of Yen with Evan Kim doing a spot on impersonation of Bruce Lee in a very funny parody of Enter the Dragon. Everything else pales by comparison. Even the underwhelming segments are mildly amusing and are usually brief enough that they are over before they get annoying. We can see here the beginnings of Airplane, The Naked Gun series, and Top Secret! The jokes come fast and furious with no time to register them before the next one hits. John Landis was a good choice for director and he keeps the humour from sinking too deeply in the mud. It's a goofy film that's a lot of fun, flaws and all.

"Kentucky Fried Movie" is tasteless, unsophisticated, and decidedly sophomoric... and one of the most hilarious films ever made! A string of politically incorrect segments made by the creators of "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun", "KFM" is an "R"-rated romp that today, nearly 30 years after its release, would be too shocking to even warrant the dreaded "NC-17" rating. Forget those unfunny amateurs Broken Lizard or the overrated Farrelly Brothers. We're talking naked breasts, oral sex, racial slurs, violence... and yet each segment leaves you delirious from not only laughter but disbelief at the fact that the Zuckers actually go away with all this. I've discovered that it really takes a certain kind of innocence to make a movie like "KFM", a naive belief that people will simply laugh at the crude spectacle of it all. Segments include a wholesome couple listening to a 1950s style "how-to" record on foreplay (wait till you see what the record comes equipped with), a thrill seeker whose trademark stunt is going to a crowd of black men and yelling out the N-word (how bold is this scene? No one has dared imitate it since), and a political debate between two analysts that ends with one of them cheerfully telling the other to "blow it out your a**" and giving them the finger. The highlight is the mini-movie within the movie, "A Fistful of Yen". A parody of all the Bruce Lee films, its hero, Loo, fights the evil Klahn, a one-armed criminal mastermind with a fondness for the phrase "extraordinary magnitude". It also pokes fun at the endless fights from the Lee films, as well as the characters' fractured English (little trivia, the actors really were Asian and spoke poor English in real life, so it wasn't intentional on their parts) The twist ending of "Yen" is one of the goofiest things you ever saw in your life. Despite the often offensive humor of "KFM", it's not a mean film by any means. No one is really safe from the wacky chaos it inflicts, and it's just hilarious. In our time of hand-wringing political correctness, "KFM" offers a cathartic experience of laughing out loud at our fears, prejudices, and, yes, stupidity. This is indeed a finger-lickin' good comedy.

This movie spawned several other similar movies--most notably AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON. While the content may occasionally be unfunny or drag on incessantly, it more than makes up for it during its funny moments as well as its boundless energy. In a way, it looks like a home movie made by a bunch of immature friends. And, this makes the movie strangely endearing. As far as the funny stuff goes, there is a lot--though my favorite (and probably sickest) skit is the public service announcement about the dead. The unfunniest portion is the over-long Bruce Lee-type film. While it is funny in spots, it detracts from the film and slows the pace to a crawl. In other words, the skits come rapid-fire--one after another with no let up--until the Asian Kung Fu movie that seems to last 10 times longer than any other skit. It's a shame they didn't just make two different films instead of trying to combine them.

So overall, its a fairly funny and fairly stupid movie that definitely is NOT kid-friendly!

The writers who would go on to create comedy classics Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and for good measure the guy who would go on to direct Animal House, combine to bring us a movie not even remotely as funny as any of those other movies I just mentioned. The Kentucky Fried Movie is a mess, a sketch comedy in which the laughs are few and far between. Watching this is an exercise in tedium, never more so than during the "feature presentation" dropped into the middle of the movie, a 30-minute martial arts parody which is an interminable bore. The best you can say for the majority of the other sketches is at least they're mercifully brief, some only a few seconds long and none more than five or six minutes in length. So at least if you don't like what you're seeing at a given moment, and way more often than not you won't, you know there will be something entirely different coming right up soon enough. But then inevitably that next sketch starts and it's lousy too and on and on and on we go. Somebody make it stop please.

If you hold out any hope that the movie is ever going to gather any momentum at all the endless martial arts sequence kills that idea, bringing the movie to a dead stop. After that the movie crawls toward a merciful end. The last few sketches actually aren't half bad. There are some genuine laughs to be had there. But by that point you're so beaten down by all the miserable stuff you've been forced to sit through you can't fully appreciate it when you finally do see something funny. By the time you get to those last few sketches this movie has long since been doomed to failure. The writers threw a lot of garbage at the wall to see what would stick and very little did. About the best thing that can be said about this movie is that you're glad it exists because if it didn't there'd be no Airplane! But I'd watch Airplane! approximately 3,637 more times before I'd ever think of watching The Kentucky Fried Movie again.

Unlike many similar movies in this genre from the 70s, Kentucky Fried Movie is generally comprised of vignettes that do not simply resort to mean-spirited and base jokes, such as those about bodily emanations and racial or ethnic stereotyping. Rather, the skits tend to have an almost "sweet" tone about them. They employ humor and gags not intended to offend, though they might, if handled by other writers, as the content can be pretty darned provocative.

Coming from me, this should mean a lot. My very own mother is depicted in the most-memorable "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble" segment: "Mrs. Burke" -- from the 1968 POST Grape-Nuts commercial -- played here by Gwen Van Dam. (You can see the real "Mrs. Burke" at the Burke Family Grape-Nuts Archives)

As the son of a most virtuous Catholic mother, herself quite unlike the character in this film, I might easily be offended. Yet, in this case, I feel honored to see my mom's name roll in the credits of this clever flick.

Many of the skits are excellent. The much praised piece, "A Fistful of Yen" (the spoof on Bruce Lee's classic "Enter the Dragon"), is so well done, it truly merits the distinction, "a must see."

I would certainly recommend this film to any adult who is not likely to be offended by nudity and sexual themes. It's a lot of fun!

Adam Burke

Directed by John 'An American Werewolf in London' Landis and written by Jim Abrahams and David & Jerry Zucker of Airplane fame, Kentucky Fried Movie is a scattershot skit comedy in which the gags come thick and fast. Fake movie trailers, faux news reports, and mock adverts abound, with the occasional cameo from a recognisable face.

As is often the case with the sketch format, the comedy is very hit and miss—perhaps even more miss than hit—but when KFM scores, it does so brilliantly, as evidenced by the film's 'feature presentation', A Fistful of Yen, a keenly observed spoof of Enter The Dragon that sees Evan C Kim mercilessly lampooning Bruce Lee with deadly accuracy (best gags: Mr Loo's speech impediment, the guy with the bullhorn, and the three kung fu dudes, Hung Well, Long Wang and Enormous Genitals).

Other moments worthy of mention are the trailer for the ultimate sexploitation flick Catholic High School Girls In Trouble (so many boobs!), the appearance of Big Jim Slade during The Wonderful World of Sex (a skit that also gives us the unforgettable line the line "the female, if she is so inclined, may latch onto his honker"), the very silly Courtroom sketch ("I'd like the ladies and gentlemen of the jury to listen to a tape"), and my personal favourite, Donald Sutherland as the Clumsy Clown.

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Well, what can I say? If you see this for the first time when you're thirteen years old, I guess "Catholic High School Girls In Trouble" stays with you for a long time! Of course, as a Brit, a lot of American-TV inspired gags went over one's head, but it was still the funniest film I'd ever seen up to that point.

I saw it again years later, and of course I look on it with affection rather than still finding it a comedy masterpiece. One thing did improve however - in the interim I had actually watched Enter The Dragon, so A Fistful of Yen (which was funny anyway) became ten times funnier, and pointed up the gag at the end when it turns into the Wizard of Oz. Some time later I bought The Groove Tube (1974) on VHS, and discovered that the idea of having a 10+ minute movie spoof in the middle of your sketch show had originated with Ken Shapiro's less-known semi-laughfest. Groove Tube's movie spoof, however, was of the Cheech & Chong drug culture movie, which never really became as much a part of the zeitgeist as Kung Fu movies have, which may explain why KFM was so much more successful than Tube.

As Monty Python discovered (twice), it is impossible to maintain laughs throughout the entire length of a sketch-based movie, and the best idea is to try and put your weakest material during the sag at minutes 50 to 70, then slam them with the best, funniest stuff for the climax. Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker and Landis *almost* pulled it off, but the fact is the courtroom sketch just contains too much silliness and becomes tiresome, leaving you a little listless for the final sketch about the TV newsreaders watching the young lovers - which in any case was an exploitation sketch designed to get the boobage count up. It's moderately funny to see a large sex toy in the serious surroundings of a court. Having the defence council pretend that the object in question is growing out of his head just looks childish.

Some have commented on their disappointment with this movie, given the calibre of the team associated with it. But in fact they've got it the wrong way round. Back in 1977/78, this was funny, original stuff, and when Airplane came round a few years later with the names Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker attached, it was then we knew to expect quality comedy. KFM was their first time out, and they did a pretty good job, considering.

One of this movie's biggest problems is that people will seek it out (like I did), raising their expectations.

About half the skits are funny, even if it's only a line or two, and the 'main feature' A Fist Full Of Yen looks like it's going to be tiresome, but is very funny in places. The only one I actually fast-forwarded through was the Courtroom, which was truly dull.

All the humour is pretty laboured and juvenile, and I don't mean in a rude/funny way - but in a really-weak-pun sort of way.

Watch "Amazon Women On The Moon" instead - or again, if it's a choice between that and KFM.

The Kentucky Fried Movie is about as funny as its title. Pretty sad, isn't it? Someone should've told the Zucker brothers back in 1977 that boobs are not funny. I don't care how many boobs you show or how big they are, they simply are not funny. I think most people rent this movie now because they hear how raunchy it is and how crazy it is. The KFM is definitely both raunchy and crazy, but one thing it is not is funny. I could barely stay awake through it. Somehow I did. Airplane! is a great movie. Airplane 2 wasn't as good, but it had it's moments. The Naked Gun Trilogy is the best, but the KFM is just plain not funny.

This movie was like the Holy Grail of DVDs for me; I couldn't find it for the longest time. Finally I just picked it up off E-Bay (which I should have done from the start, of course) and watched it for the first time in years last night.

In terms of laughs per minute, this one is a strong contender for funniest movie of all time. Written by Zucker Abraham and Zucker, directed by John Landis, and produced by Samuel L Bronkowitz (just kidding), "The Kentucky Fried Movie" is really nothing more than a collection of skits, barely connected by the convention that they're all things you might see on TV (or at the movies). But, oh, the skits. Let's just say that no single episode of "Saturday Night Live" was ever this funny.

Best of the bunch is the movie's centerpiece, "A Fistful of Yen", a dead-on parody of kung fu action movies a la "Enter The Dragon". In this bit, the longest in the film, a Bruce Lee type named Loo has to infiltrate a mountain fortress run by the villainous Dr. Klahn, who is building an army of extraordinary magnitude. The martial arts scenes are hilarious; it may be the most staged-looking fighting of all time. Beginning with Loo training other fighters ("What was that? This is not a chawade. We need total concen-TWAY-tion," he yells at one student) and ending with Loo finally going home (in a completely out-of-left-field ending having nothing to do with the previous action but seeming somehow fitting anyway), the slapstick jokes come fast and furious, even parodying "The Dating Game" at one point. This is a direct precursor to ZAZ's later movies like "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun".

Then there's the incredible "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble", which aims to parody 70s porno flicks ("More shocking than 'Behind the Green Door'... Never before has the beauty of the sexual act been so crassly exploited!" the announcer screams.) To get an idea of the kind of humor seen here, picture a hot chick approaching a loser and saying in a breathy voice "Show me your nuts!" and the guy proceeding to start acting like a total loon. In "United Appeal for the Dead" Henry Gibson speaks at great length about death, the number one killer in the United States, and what his group can do to help a loved one who has died lead a normal life. "That's Armageddon" features George Lazenby and parodies every Irwin Allen disaster flick made. A young man and woman discover the pleasures of sex through an instructional record in "Sex Record", and "Courtroom" is a hilarious parody of courtroom melodramas featuring Wally (the real Tony Dow) and the Beav (Jerry Zucker mugging it up in place of Jerry Mathers) as observers. The movie begins and ends with two news-themed skits, "AM Today" and the racy "Eyewitness News", in which the newscasters watch a couple with the TV on having sex. And there's much more.

"The Kentucky Fried Movie" is not for all tastes; I've known people who have watched it and just said "This is stupid." It is, indeed, stupid, but within the confines of the genre, it's one of the best. You'll laugh at the stupid jokes and stupid puns and stupid lines and stupid stunts all the way through if you like this sort of thing. The movie is very clever in how it packs the laughs.

Directed by John Landis.

This movie is a low budget series of spoofs of commercials, movies and television. It has a main story, "A Fistful of Yen" and several other segments before and after it.

"A Fistful of Yen": A martial arts movie satire where all kinds of zanyness and sight gags pop up. I thought this segment was just too stupid for it's own good. It lasted too long, and the voice over yelling was just silly. 31 mins.

The other segments include a news program spoof that's pretty funny, The Joy of Sex (for the middle aged) and Courtroom, a 50's courtroom trial. My personal favorite segments were "Feel-a-Round" where a man goes to a movie where someone stands behind him and everything that happens in the movie happens to him by the movie theater worker, the zinc video and College Girls in Distress.

I recommend this for a few laughs, but it is a bit uneven.

My rating: 2 1/2 out of 4 stars. rated R for nudity, violence and sexuality. 84 mins

The Kentucky Fried Movie is probably one of the worst and the most overrated comedy of all time. This movie is dreadfully un-funny. Only a few sketches were funny e.g The Chinese guy saying to the dog "We need total concentwation. That was funny. Other than that, terrible. Also, one thing that really annoys me are sex scenes in comedies. Why do they expect us to laugh at sex it's not that funny. You will only laugh at this movie if you're drunk or someone that really loves sex. John Landis really let himself down. If you want to see a movie directed by him that's good I suggest Animal House. The writers Jim Abrahams and David Zucker also really let themselves down. Good movies by them are Flying High, Top Secret and The Naked Gun trilogy. A huge disappointment. 1/5

There's something to be said for any movie that actually has a character named "Enormous Genitals". This is the first movie by the Zucker Brothers, the same geniuses that brought us Airplane, Top Secret and the Naked Gun movies. Haven't seen this yet? Pull up a nice comfy chair and get ready for 90 of the most hilarious minutes of film you can find. Cleopatra Schwartz is a riot, A Fistful Of Yen is the best spoof of Enter The Dragon or any Kung Fu film ever. The mock commercials are funny too. Anybody with Attention Deficit Disorder like me, this is the movie for you. It never stops moving, not for a minute. Henry Gibson's bit roll in this will have you laughing for days. But it's Samuel L. Bronkowitz's presentation of Catholic High School Girls In Trouble that will sit in you the longest. Best line: "Show me your/you're nuts! They certainly have.

This film is essentially a collage of short comedy scenes involving parodies of commericals, television shows and movies. Some of them are funny but a number of them are also either corny or crude as well. The main feature is titled "A Fistful of Yen" which is a parody of "Enter the Dragon" and involves a martial arts expert named "Loo" (Evan C. Kim) hired to travel to an island fortress to rescue an attractive agent by the name of "Ada Gronick" (Ingrid Wang) from an international organization headed by the evil "Dr. Klahn" (Bong Soo Han). The ending is quite unpredictable. Likewise, there were other scenes I enjoyed including the promotion of a movie titled "Cleopatra Schwartz" along with the very last scene involving a young man (played by Richard Gates) and his girlfriend (Tara Strohmeier) getting acquainted on a couch while watching "Eyewitness News". And there were quite a few other scenes which may or may not appeal to other viewers as some of the humor is rather crude and not suitable for young audiences. In anyc case, I enjoyed it for the most part and have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

What a disappointment! Agonizingly bad "comedy" from the people that made really worthwhile efforts such as Airplane and Blues Brothers. I tolerate almost any bad movie, but this one actually had me fast forwarding- yes it was during the Kung-fu thing. It was truly amazing to sit there for unfunny joke attempts over and over again. Why did I give this a 2 instead of a 1? I know it's shallow, but there were 2 sex comedy gimmicks that were amusing mostly for the very sexy naked women. Apart from that it's right there with the absolute worst of all time. Many people seem to connect this one with Groove Tube, but I now see that is a horrible comparison. GT was great when it first came out and still has some extremely funny bits.