High Anxiety

In October we will be celebrating the 100th birthday of one of the funniest filmmakers to have ever graced Hollywood: Mel Brooks. The man who tried to make bad taste a metaphor for his work was also instrumental in helping David Lynch prosper in film business thanks to producing his "Elephant Man" that got 8 Oscar nominations and gave Lynch plenty of benefit-of-the-doubt to do his own thing. The third film in the programme will be "High Anxiety" (1977). 

It’s dangerous to try and parody Alfred Hitchcock since Hitchcock was already in on the joke. However, Brooks manages to score some hits in High Anxiety, largely by taking some of Hitch’s most famous set-pieces to their logical, usually sexual or scatological, conclusion. The scene inspired by the attack of The Birds (1963) is easy enough to predict, but there’s a very funny spin on the shower scene from Psycho (1960) and a conclusion which manages to combine Vertigo (1958) with The Wizard of Oz (1939).

What’s best about the film though is Brooks himself, who has never been so natural or so likeable on screen. He’s in his element playing straight man to a host of grotesques – familiar faces crop up frequently – and relishes the chance to get romantic with the wonderful Madeleine Kahn. He even has a very creditable stab at becoming a cabaret singer by devising a whole scene simply so he can sing the title song, complete with small talk and whiplashing the microphone cord. Brooks regulars Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman at their most unbridled and Mel Brooks at his most relaxed. 

After seeing the film, Alfred Hitchcock sent Brooks a case of wine as “a small token of my pleasure.”