MEL BROOKS AND HIS HIGH ANXIETY

On this date in 1977, "High Anxiety" was released. It is really an underrated Mel Brooks film!

Mel Brooks once said of Alfred Hitchcock: "Anyone who has ever rolled a foot of film owes something to this man."

Brooks took great pains to not only spoof Hitchcock films, but also to emulate the look and style of his pictures. In an interview he said, "I watch the kind of film we're making with the [director of photography], so he knows not to be frivolous. He's got to get the real lighting, the real texture. For 'High Anxiety', it was 'What is a Hitchcock film? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How does he light them? How long is a scene? What is the cutting? When does he bring things to a boil?' We just watch everything."

Brooks hired the actual bird handler from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1963) for work on this picture. The bird droppings were actually mayonnaise and chopped spinach. However, Brooks reported to Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" that the helicopter spraying the fake bird droppings scared the pigeons so much that he believed half of the bird droppings were real.

One of Brooks' favorite routines was doing a musical impression of Frank Sinatra, and in this film he performs the song "High Anxiety" in an exaggerated version of Sinatra's singing style, right down to dropping the first syllable of the word "anxiety." . Brooks wrote the song and lyrics. Brooks claimed he received singing offers from Las Vegas casinos and clubs following the release of the film.

During a special preview screening, Alfred Hitchcock's only criticism of the film to Brooks was that in the shower scene, when the shower curtain is torn off the rail, they used 13 shower curtain rings, whereas in "Psycho" (1960), they only used 10. After viewing the film, Hitchcock sent Brooks a case containing six magnums of 1961 Château Haut-Brion wine with a note that read, "A small token of my pleasure, have no anxiety about this."