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Created Jun 21, 2015 07:50PM PST • Edited Jun 23, 2015 10:04AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Mel Brooks parodied Alfred Hitchcock movies in High Anxiety with middling results, though perhaps the movie simply hasn’t aged well over time. It remains modestly funny all these decades later, with the added value of now being a time capsule from the late 70s, back when Hyatt Regency atriums were new and wow.

   Set at a ritzy psychiatric hospital, a luxe environment that is very Hitchcock, the movie’s jokes alternate between silly satire of workaday things and simple Hitch allusions. The former includes such tongue-in-cheek humor as a woman who carries Louis Vuitton accessories, and then wears an LV pantsuit, drives an LV festooned Cadillac, etc. The latter includes Mel Brooks in a Janet Leigh shower scene (a la Psycho), using a phone booth at Fort Point (Vertigo), to the line “Mr. MacGuffin called and said it would be alright”.

   The movie is worth a tumble for fans of satire and Hitchcock movies. Don’t check both boxes? Stay away.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   High Anxiety marks Mel Brooks’ first talking role. He’s fine as the centerpiece of the movie, mining lots of humor from his deadpan reactions to the craziness around him.

   Cloris Leachman is the funniest member of the cast as the evil Nurse Diesel. I’ve never been a Leachman fan, but her performance here is essential, sickly sexy and perfectly understated.

   Madeline Kahn is less funny than in other Mel Brooks movies, but strong nonetheless.

   Harvey Korman – a terrific comic actor – is sickly brilliant as a conniving psychiatrist with a dark side.

   Notable Supporters

   • Dick Van Patten as a traumatized psychiatrist: Van Patten was all over 1970s TV and movies.
   • Charlie Callas as a psychiatric patient who thinks he’s a Cocker Spaniel
   • Barry Levinson, a co-writer of High Anxiety and later Hollywood bigwig, as a Bellboy

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Mel Brooks produced, directed, cowrote and starred in High Anxiety. His personal anxiety was reduced when it brought in 10x its production cost. He was thus a Macher, a Hollywood success!

    Lots of crazed behavior and lots of fave scenes, though probably fewer for me than hardcore fans. Mine:

    • Ink down the drain instead of blood, tweaking Psycho
    • Psychiatrist convention at the San Fran Hyatt Regency in Embarcadero Center when it was new: banners of great shrinks hang from the ceiling, including FREUD, JUNG & BROTHERS, as in Dr. Joyce Brothers. That’s funny, especially in ’77.

11. Direction Good 3.0

12. Play Good 3.0

    “What a dramatic airport!”, the banal dialogue is part of the joke.

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5

    Hyatt Regency elevators when atriums were new. Fear of heights anyone?

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.9

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0