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.

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.

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?