Neither the height of parody nor the depths of a phoned-in throwaway, “High Anxiety” (1977) is likable comedy from a writer-director-star, Mel Brooks, who clearly admires Alfred Hitchcock. The script (with lines like “meet me at the north … by northwest … corner”) is goofy-smart whereas the execution leans goofy-stiff. But nonetheless it’s easy to watch and I’m glad it exists as an intersection of two masters.
Though “High Anxiety” is never stupid, and the overall plot is sturdy enough to hang jokes on, each individual gag tends to be blatantly telegraphed. For instance, a flock of pigeons lands on playground bars near Brooks’ Richard T. Thorndyke and one of them poops on him. Then it’s just a matter of playing out the scene till he’s covered in bird poop.
Several jokes are more clever than that; a few are less clever. Brooks and three co-writers (including future big-name director Barry Levinson, who also plays a bellhop) riff on Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (Thorndyke is a psychiatrist), “North by Northwest” (a frame-job shooting), “Vertigo” (Thorndyke’s condition, plus a climactic tower sequence), “Psycho” (a shower scene) and “The Birds” (as noted above).
“High Anxiety” (1977)
Director: Mel Brooks
Writers: Mel Brooks, Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca, Barry Levinson
Stars: Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman
Hitchcock-adjacent film “Blow Up” gets a nod, and so do “NxNW” progeny “Mission: Impossible” and “James Bond.” These are a step too far for my taste; I would’ve been fine with the whole parody being in the world of Hitchcock.
That’s clearly Brooks’ main inspiration, though, as he copies traits ranging from the obvious (Thorndyke having a vision of falling against a spiraling background) to subtle (Hitchcockian camera angles).
Trading suspense for laughs
Suspense is a difficult genre to parody, and we see early in “High Anxiety” that genuine suspense must be sacrificed. It’s replaced with absurdity. Thorndyke’s assistant, Brophy (Ron Carey), tells him the previous head psychiatrist at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous died under mysterious circumstances. A Bernard Herrmann-esque score plays, to their confusion. A bus housing a philharmonic orchestra is passing them; the musicians are rehearsing with the windows down.
Brooks is a sympathetic straight man, even though Thorndyke admits he got into psychiatry purely for the money. Giving a speech: “Psychology was akin to witchcraft. But some of these great people, these giants behind me …” (He gestures to pictures of doctors such as Jung and Freud.) “… gave us a nice living.”
The supporting cast seems a little confused. Though Madeline Kahn is an obvious pull from Brooks’ troupe to be the Hitchcock blonde, she mostly shares Brooks’ job of expositing. Cloris Leachman gets the showiest role, as the humorously named and mustachioed Nurse Diesel, but she’s way over the top. It’s a misfire compared to her master-class turn as Frau Blucher in “Young Frankenstein.”
The arc of Levinson’s bellhop is that he’s annoyed by Thorndyke’s request for a newspaper, thus providing setup for the shower scene. The setups are blunt, and the payoffs don’t always reward that time investment. That said, the blatancy did make me anticipate the visual punchlines, and I enjoyed being on the same Hitchcock-fan page as Brooks.
Though this isn’t the “Vertigo” of parodies, I won’t get high anxiety over the idea of watching it again.
For Mel Brooks’ 100th birthday year, RFMC is looking back at his catalog on some Mondays.