High Anxiety: A Quick Review

Mel Brooks, being the talented man that he is, wrote, directed, produced, and starred in "High Anxiety."  It was released in 1977 and co-starred Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, and Cloris Leachman.  The film is a spoof of Alfred Hitchcock films.  Mel Brooks plays the new head of The Psycho-Neurotic Institute For the Very, Very Nervous, Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke.  Harvey Korman plays Dr. Montague and Cloris Leachman is Nurse Diesel.  They have a fun little screwed up romantic thing going on.  Madeline Kahn plays Victoria Brisbane, the daughter  of one of the guys in the asylum.  Montague and Diesel are planning to kill her father.  Thorndyke is accused of murder and suffers from "high anxiety," (aka veritigo, yes like the Hitchcock movie of the same name).  The cast is hilarious and wonderful.  The aforementioned four are/were some of the funniest comedians and are frequent stars of Mel Brooks movies.  Madeline Kahn has some of the funniest lines of the entire movie and Cloris Leachman as Nurse Diesel is just perfect casting.  Obviously the majority of the best scenes are spoofs of classic scenes from Hitchcock films.  This includes parodies of classic scenes from "Psycho", "Vertigo," "The Birds," and mentions of several others.  I wish, however that they would have spoofed some more classic scenes, such as the crop dusting scene from "North by Northwest."  I guess it really wouldn't have fit in anywhere in the movie. The score, also is similar to that used in Hitchcock movies, in case you ever forget what kind of movie you are watching.  It's a combination of funny and suspenseful.  Another amusing part of the movie is when the camera occasionally zooms into a window or something, and then gets so close that it shatters it.  So, this movie was pretty funny.  Not nearly as good as "Young Frankenstein" or "Blazing Saddles" and since I watched it alone I actually didn't really laugh out loud, but I did indeed smile.  It is however, way better than Mel Brooks' last two movies, "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."  Those were just two bad, completely unfunny ideas and proof that Mel Brooks movies were no longer as funny as they were two decades prior.  If you like Mel Brooks and/or Alfred Hitchcock movies you should enjoy it.  I happen to love both these directors, for drastically different reasons.  Oh, and Mel Brooks wrote and sang the title song, "High Anxiety."  And was actually quite good.

-Joseph Sbrilli