Alfred Hitchcock gets the Mel Brooks treatment here with rapid fire parodies of films like "Psycho", "The Birds", "North by Northwest" and "Vertigo", so if you're a Hitchcock fan there's some amusing stuff here. I thought the Mr. MacGuffin reference was clever but didn't see any other fans pick up on it in their reviews here. Charlie Callas must have been the MacGuffin in this picture, after we see him the first time he doesn't show up again. Harvey Korman makes for an interesting match as Dr. Montague for Cloris Leachman's Nurse Diesel character. Gosh, wasn't she hideous as the nurse from hell? I thought Louise Fletcher was pretty intense as Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", but Diesel would have given her a run for the money. As others have noted, Mel Brooks himself might not have been the best choice for Thorndyke, and the parodies are mostly way over the top (The Bird droppings are particularly gross), but it's what you've come to expect from the comic director. It's not his best work, but you can tell the players are having fun. It would have been very cool if Hitch had made a cameo, why didn't anyone think of that?
Review of High Anxiety
