IMDb RATING
6.4/10
21K
YOUR RATING
The daily programming of a fictional local TV channel presented as a series of highly irreverent skits.The daily programming of a fictional local TV channel presented as a series of highly irreverent skits.The daily programming of a fictional local TV channel presented as a series of highly irreverent skits.
- Director
- Writers
- Stars
Evan C. Kim
- Loo (segment "A Fistful of Yen")
- (as Evan Kim)
Bong Soo Han
- Dr. Klahn (segment "A Fistful of Yen")
- (as Master Bong Soo Han)
Joseph G. Medalis
- Paul Burmaster (segment "High Adventure")
- (as Joe Medalis)
Richard Gates
- Boy (segment "Eyewitness News")
- (as Rick Gates)
Tara Strohmeier
- Girl (segment "Eyewitness News")
- (as Tara Strohmeir)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
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.
In our millenial DVD culture, we demand plenty of extras and insights. "Kentucky Fried Movie," the little movie that could, delivers it. Regrettably, its successor "Airplane!" didn't. Both movies were made by the famous comedy moviemakers David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, best known as ZAZ. "Kentucky Fried Movie," or KFM as it is known, was directed by John Landis, who went to big projects as "Animal House" and "The Blues Brothers." As a small movie, KFM would pave the way for the filmmakers successes. But in DVD terms, KFM did a much better job than "Airplane!" with extras aplenty. "Airplane!" only had a trailer and ZAZ's mediocre commentary track, which ZAZ did much better in KFM. As for KFM's extras, they included a hilarious 8-minute home movie which ZAZ proved to their relatives they were making a real movie in Hollywood, a clear-cut photo gallery, bios of ZAZ and John Landis, and the best commentary track they have done so far.
As for KFM, what makes this small movie so special? Although much of the movie is done tastelessly, it is fun tastelessness that everyone in it is enjoying it. There is a lot of nudity and foul language, but it had it's heart in the right place. And as for the cast, there are mostly unknown actors, and many of them are quite attractive and talented, with cameos by more famous actors such as the late Bill Bixby in a headache sketch, Donald Sutherland as a clumsy waiter in a sketch spoofing disaster movies, and "Leave it to Beaver" stars Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow kidding themselves as bickering brother jurors in the courtroom sketch.
This movie, I think, is the best spoof of pop culture I've ever seen, outdoing its predecessor "The Groove Tube," made 3years earlier than KFM and featuring bits by a then-unknown and pre-Saturday Night Live Chevy Chase. One of my favorite skits are "A.M. Today" with a gorilla rampaging the studio, scaring off everyone, while a calm anchorwoman (played by the lovely little-known actress Janice Kent)continues her duties of reporting the news. Another favorite is"Sex Records," with a black couple being instructed on lovemaking by a record until the woman is whisked away by a black muscleman, Yet another favorite is "Feel-A-Round," where a theatre usher listens to the dialogue of a movie, gets out his props to feel a movie goer, even scaring him with a knife when the actress announces she'll cut up her lover with a knife. Then there is the final skit where a newsman from TV has the power to peer into the living room of a young couple having sex, and his crew (well-played by ZAZ themselves) leer on. But the best sketch of all is "A Fistful of Yen," a 17-minute takeoff of Bruce Lee Movies featuring a lisping Karate champ fighting against the master despot Dr. Klahn, who wants to take over the world, and ends with the Hero in Dorothy drag spoofing "The Wizard of Oz."
If you like your DVDs, and of a low-budget movie, KFM delivers the goods. Hopefully, there will be a special edition of "Airplane!" in the future for fans of that movie who were disappointed in the DVD treatment of that great classic , but let's not hold our breaths. But for ZAZ fans, KFM was the best DVD work they have done so far, and it's a special edition in its own right, outshining and outselling "Airplane!" by a substantial margin.
As for KFM, what makes this small movie so special? Although much of the movie is done tastelessly, it is fun tastelessness that everyone in it is enjoying it. There is a lot of nudity and foul language, but it had it's heart in the right place. And as for the cast, there are mostly unknown actors, and many of them are quite attractive and talented, with cameos by more famous actors such as the late Bill Bixby in a headache sketch, Donald Sutherland as a clumsy waiter in a sketch spoofing disaster movies, and "Leave it to Beaver" stars Jerry Mathers and Tony Dow kidding themselves as bickering brother jurors in the courtroom sketch.
This movie, I think, is the best spoof of pop culture I've ever seen, outdoing its predecessor "The Groove Tube," made 3years earlier than KFM and featuring bits by a then-unknown and pre-Saturday Night Live Chevy Chase. One of my favorite skits are "A.M. Today" with a gorilla rampaging the studio, scaring off everyone, while a calm anchorwoman (played by the lovely little-known actress Janice Kent)continues her duties of reporting the news. Another favorite is"Sex Records," with a black couple being instructed on lovemaking by a record until the woman is whisked away by a black muscleman, Yet another favorite is "Feel-A-Round," where a theatre usher listens to the dialogue of a movie, gets out his props to feel a movie goer, even scaring him with a knife when the actress announces she'll cut up her lover with a knife. Then there is the final skit where a newsman from TV has the power to peer into the living room of a young couple having sex, and his crew (well-played by ZAZ themselves) leer on. But the best sketch of all is "A Fistful of Yen," a 17-minute takeoff of Bruce Lee Movies featuring a lisping Karate champ fighting against the master despot Dr. Klahn, who wants to take over the world, and ends with the Hero in Dorothy drag spoofing "The Wizard of Oz."
If you like your DVDs, and of a low-budget movie, KFM delivers the goods. Hopefully, there will be a special edition of "Airplane!" in the future for fans of that movie who were disappointed in the DVD treatment of that great classic , but let's not hold our breaths. But for ZAZ fans, KFM was the best DVD work they have done so far, and it's a special edition in its own right, outshining and outselling "Airplane!" by a substantial margin.
Incredibly funny movie that gets off to a slow start, but once you stick with it, it will probably be one of the funnier movies you will ever see. Especially if you grew up in the 1970s. This movie played at our college and the next day the theater was required by the dean's office to issue an apology in the college paper. This movie has a lot of sexual content that ticked somebody off, I guess. This would make an excellent double feature with the earlier "Groove Tube" so you can see just what Saturday Night Live and other shows like that were trying to accomplish. 1970s adult film star Uschi Digart does a cameo during a shower scene that will not soon be forgotten once seen. Many, many cameos to look for including Donald Sutherland, Bill Bixby and on and on. The highlight of the movie is a mini-film called "A Fistful of Yen" which is a spot-on parody of Bruce Lee's "Enter The Dragon". Imagine Bruce Lee getting the treatment by the people behind "Airplane" and you get the idea. If you are in a silly mood this si a movie worth getting. Being that it was made in the 1970s, I suppose being stoned would make this movie an absolute laugh-riot.
"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.
Did you know
- TriviaOriginal titles for the film included "Free Popcorn" and "Closed for Remodeling." Presumably both were rejected for the confusion they would cause when displayed on a theater marquee.
- GoofsDuring the "Fistful of Yen" sequence, the tour guide mentions that the tanks containing the chemicals for germ warfare can each hold "4000 cubic liters". The liter is already a unit of volume, so the phrase "cubic liters" doesn't really mean anything.
- Quotes
Henry Gibson: In the past year, over 800,000 Americans have died. Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be our nation's number one killer.
- Crazy creditsThe credits state that the cast is listed in order of appearance - and then starts with Cleopatra Schwarz (who appears about 2/3rds of the way through the film)!
- Alternate versionsA version aired on Comedy Central (and perhaps on other channels) features a small variety of edits:
- The 'Cleopatra Schwartz' sequence is censored heavily for language and nudity
- During the closing sequence (where the teenagers are having sex on the couch, and the news crew is watching), the camera zoom is altered several times so that nothing but the teens' faces show. The zooms are awkward, and blatantly added.
- The entirety of the 'Catholic School Girls In Trouble' scene is missing. It is listed in the credits, however.
- ConnectionsFeatured in I Love the '70s: Volume 2: 1977 (2006)
- SoundtracksCarioca
(uncredited)
Music by Vincent Youmans
Lyrics by Gus Kahn and Edward Eliscu
Performed by Jo Stafford (as Darlene Edwards) with Paul Weston on piano (as Jonathan Edwards)
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- The Kentucky Fried Movie
- Filming locations
- Rialto Theatre - 1023 S. Fair Oaks Avenue, South Pasadena, California, USA(Feel-a-round sequence)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $600,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 23 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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