Starz was programming a Mel Brooks night as "Young Frankenstein" was followed by "High Anxiety". Andrea and I stuck around to watch this movie because, hey, what the hell? Neither of us had seen this movie before.
"High Anxiety" is Mel Brook's tribute - slash - parody of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Mel stars as Dr. Richard Thorndyke, a preeminent psychiatrist taking over a California institute for "the very, very nervous". Thorndyke is immediately caught up in a web of mystery, intrigue and MURDER. A nurse and a doctor at the institute have quite a scam going keeping very rich patients at the institute long after their respective mental issues have been resolved.
Like an actual Alfred Hitchcock movie, the plot of "High Anxiety" is beyond the point. What is the point is constantly assaulting Thorndyke with a barrage of weird incidents and strange characters that challenge his sanity. Thorndyke has his own issues with a fear of heights ("High Anxiety" if you will) which echoes the vertigo experienced by Jimmy Stewart in "Vertigo".
This movie is littered with callbacks to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. The famous scene from "Psycho" when Janet Leigh is stabbed in the shower is reenacted by a crazed bellhop delivering a newspaper while Thorndyke is in the shower.
"The Birds" is homaged when a whole flock of birds decide to deliver bombardments of excessively large amounts of poop directly on Dr. Thorndyke.
"High Anxiety" is a pleasant enough diversion but it can be quite uneven. It seems for large stretches of the movie that Mel Brooks is uncharacteristically content to play the straight man as the beleaguered Dr. Thorndyke. Then he breaks into song in a hotel lounge, performing like a prototypical Las Vegas lounge singer to a tune called "High Anxiety" (which the opening credits tells us was written by Mel Brooks himself.) Then he shleps his way past airport security while disguised as a cantankerous old Jewish person.
As the director, Mel Brooks seems unsure how much his film is a tribute to Hitchcock and how much is it a parody. On one hand, characters actually get murdered in this movie. Then Brooks the Parodist takes over and has a scene like the one in the first part of the movie, looking through the window as Thorndyke dines with his new colleagues. The camera pulls in too close and shatters the window. The gag is repeated at the end when the camera pulls way. We hear Brooks the director and I presume the cinematographer arguing with each other as the camera pulls out and smashing through another window.
The flashback to the source of Thorndyke's high anxiety is to when he was a baby while his parents were arguing about him. Mel Brooks plays the baby.
The director of "Young Frankenstein" is trying to make an Alfred Hitchcock style movie but the director of "Blazing Saddles" keeps popping his head in.
Mel Brooks' usual gang of comedic nitwits are on hand with Harvey Korman, Chloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn doing their usual funny stuff. I noticed Howard Morris' name in the credits. He plays a psychiatrist named Dr. Lilloman which everyone mispronounces as Dr. Little Old Man. I'm glad I had the close captioning on because I think that joke would've gone over my head otherwise. Howard Morris is probably best known for his role on the Andy Griffith Show as the crazed wildman of the woods, Ernest T. Bass.
"High Anxiety" is not one of Mel Brooks stronger efforts but if you're dead tired on the couch and too damn lazy to work the remote and this movie comes on whatever channel you happen to be watching, eh, there are worse ways to spend a Friday night.
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