PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

VitoCorleone1972 The Master of Parody takes on the Master of Suspense in "High Anxiety."As insinuated in the headline for this review, this movie seems to operate to me as a sort of "Blazing Saddles" Lite. The two films even share two actors besides Mel Brooks, those being Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman. I make this comparison because this film has a similar style of humor, yet the jokes are not quite as clever and they don't come as fast as in "Saddles."But, it's not exactly fair to compare these two films, so let's look at "High Anxiety" on its own.Starting with the script, the dialogue is written in a way that is rather corny at times to parody the seriousness and arguable melodrama of films like "Vertigo." It's fairly amusing, but not as much so as the visual gags, which really drive the humor of the film.As for the acting, in comedies like this, the way to judge an actor's performance is by judging their ability to react to the comic goings on around them. As to this, everyone here does a fine job. Kahn and Brooks play their straight dialogue in just that way while Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman relish their roles as villains who are so cartoonishly evil that they might as well be twirling their mustaches the entire time.Finally, the direction. The whole thing is shot and scored very dramatically, going as far as to have the characters look into the camera during loud and bombastic music cues. This also serves to parody the style of Hitchcock.As mentioned earlier, most of the jokes are visual in nature. They are consistently funny and there are only a few that don't quite land. Brooks paces the action in a way that makes the jokes somewhat unexpected, if nothing else.Overall, this is a solid tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and a decent entry in Mel Brooks' filmography. It's main flaw is that it simply isn't quite as funny as some of Brooks' other work. On its own, however, it works quite well. Sit back, relax, and try not to get any "High Anxiety."

harryk-65258 If you want to know a little bit about the sorry state of American society, please scroll through some of the reviews of this film...We are a humorless people that need to analyze and meta-critic everything...High Anxiety is classic Mel Brooks...is it as good as Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles? No, but its high culture compared to what stands for the contemporary Hollywood comedy, and Brooks demanded a little bit from the audience, especially in terms of intelligence...anyway, it's a great flick with a variety of hilarious performances, especially from Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn and Harvey Korman...well worth the time.

gwnightscream Mel Brooks writes, directs & stars in this 1977 comedy that co-stars Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman. This is a send-up of Alfred Hitchcock films, mainly "Vertigo," "Psycho" and "The Birds" and Brooks plays Richard Thorndyke, a psychiatrist who has a fear of heights, "High Anxiety." He helps woman, Victoria Brisbane (Kahn) search for her father, but in the process he's falsely accused of murder and tries to overcome his phobia. Korman (Blazing Saddles) plays Dr. Charles Montague and Leachman (Young Frankenstein) plays Nurse Diesel who set Richard up. This is a good spoof, Brooks is great as usual, the rest of the cast is good as well as John Morris' score. If you enjoys comedies, check this one out.

mark.waltz I've often heard that sometimes, it is the inmates who are running the asylum, and in the case of those who run the Hospital for the "Very, Very Nervous", they should definitely be patients, not doctors and nurses. Even newcomer Mel Brooks, the new head of the institution, has his own issues, and that is a grave fear of heights. Discovering this, jealous doctor Harvey Korman and the very butch Cloris Leachman (named "Nurse Diesel" with a little hint of a mustache that Leachman added herself) plan his downfall, unless a murder rap gets him first.This is practically a spoof of every Hitchcock film of the late 1950's and 60's, from "Rear Window" through "Marnie", and some of Brooks' ideas are so funny many comic writers and directors were probably jealous that they didn't think of them first. Of course, a few of his ideas didn't make it into the film, such as one of the characters apparently coming out of the nose of one of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore wearing all green. ("Family Guy" did grab that idea years later for one episode...) But what makes it in, whether it being a spoof of the shower scene in "Psycho", the chase by crapping birds, and the obvious take-off from "Vertigo", is pure ingenuity on the part of the great Mr. Brooks.An improvement on his previous spoof, "Silent Movie", this has a much higher ratio of laughs, going way over the limit on the speedometer, and rivaling "The Produers" and "Young Frankenstein" for consistency in chuckles. Some people are just funny by making an entrance, and that happens the minute that a very blonde Madeline Kahn makes her entrance heaving as she bangs on Brooks' San Francisco hotel suite door. "What are you wearing?", she asks an alleged obscene phone caller (actually Brooks, being attacked by a Richard Keil like tin-toothed villain), then later joins Brooks in old people disguise as they try to board a plane out of the city. Leachman almost tops Frau Brucher with Diesel, and after watching her, you too may join the thousands who imitate her here by saying, "The drapes. He wanted to change the drapes. Color is very important in the recovery of the mentally disturbed." Even in recent performances, Leachman emulates both of these Brooks characters she has become legendary for, and along with Kahn is surely to be listed among the funniest women in film.Many great character performers and familiar faces (Dick Van Patten among them as a doomed doctor; Charlie Callas as a mental patient who believes he's a cocker spaniel) pop in and out of the action, and there is so much to praise here that it is simply easier to tell people, "Just watch the movie and be delighted!".