Just three years after his twin peaks of "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein" (probably his comic apex), Mel Brooks made this fitfully funny send-up of Hitchcock's suspense classics. The most detrimental change here is that he lost the wonderfully manic Gene Wilder as his leading man and chose to make himself the star. Brooks is unfortunately miscast as Dr. Richard Thorndyke lacking the enigmatic leading-man charisma so central to most of Hitchcock's classics. To some degree, he knows his limitations since he inserts several irrelevant bits of business that have little to do with the character, like his sudden piano-bar crooning of the title tune or his Catskills-level disguise as the old Jewish man at the airport. However, in catering to his own persona, he compromises what there is of a suspenseful element to the movie.
The plot centers on Thorndyke as he becomes the new Chief of Staff at The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. Suffering from an actual condition called "high anxiety", he cannot stand heights but perseveres in trying to run the medical facility despite the connivances of the scarifying Nurse Diesel and the weak, bondage-loving Dr. Montague. Thorndyke is then shuttled off to a medical convention at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco - the ideal setting to challenge his acrophobia - where he meets a mysterious blonde named Victoria and gets framed for murder. It all works toward a climax that plays like a riff on "Vertigo".
Brooks produces some genuine laughs along the way - the camera smashing through glass doors in zooming upon a dinner scene, the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra providing atmospheric thrill music on a passing bus, and basically anything related to the wonderful Madeline Kahn as Victoria. Looking resplendent in a blonde wig, she comes awfully late into the film but makes her moments count, especially her stimulated reaction to what she thinks is an obscene phone call. Alas, there are a lot of bits that aren't that funny - comedian Charlie Callas as an inmate who thinks he is a cocker spaniel, the self-inflicted censorship after Thorndyke's speech and the Jewish couple charade at the airport.
The film also takes quite a while to establish itself and only increases momentum when the action moves to San Francisco. Future director Barry Levinson, one of the movie's four writers, has a hilarious bit as a high-strung bellboy resistant to getting Thorndyke a newspaper. This leads to a funny take-off of the "Psycho" shower scene, though I could have done without seeing Brooks in the buff. There is another funny take-off on the schoolyard scene from "The Birds" though it honestly feels wedged in for no narrative purpose. There are also references to non-Hitchcock films like "Call Northside 777" (the photo enlargement plot turn) and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
Cloris Leachman deserves a medal for looking so horrendous as Nurse Diesel, though she plays the role quite similarly to her Frau Blucher in "Young Frankenstein". Harvey Korman has always been more a sketch comic and proves that again as Montague, as do Howard Morris as kindly Professor Lilloman (Little-Old-Man) and Ron Carey as double-speak sidekick Brophy. John Morris's music score is a fitting tribute to Hitchcock, though Paul Lohmann's cinematography seems particularly washed out in the print transfer on the DVD. There are no extras other than the original trailers for four other Brooks films.
The plot centers on Thorndyke as he becomes the new Chief of Staff at The Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. Suffering from an actual condition called "high anxiety", he cannot stand heights but perseveres in trying to run the medical facility despite the connivances of the scarifying Nurse Diesel and the weak, bondage-loving Dr. Montague. Thorndyke is then shuttled off to a medical convention at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco - the ideal setting to challenge his acrophobia - where he meets a mysterious blonde named Victoria and gets framed for murder. It all works toward a climax that plays like a riff on "Vertigo".
Brooks produces some genuine laughs along the way - the camera smashing through glass doors in zooming upon a dinner scene, the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra providing atmospheric thrill music on a passing bus, and basically anything related to the wonderful Madeline Kahn as Victoria. Looking resplendent in a blonde wig, she comes awfully late into the film but makes her moments count, especially her stimulated reaction to what she thinks is an obscene phone call. Alas, there are a lot of bits that aren't that funny - comedian Charlie Callas as an inmate who thinks he is a cocker spaniel, the self-inflicted censorship after Thorndyke's speech and the Jewish couple charade at the airport.
The film also takes quite a while to establish itself and only increases momentum when the action moves to San Francisco. Future director Barry Levinson, one of the movie's four writers, has a hilarious bit as a high-strung bellboy resistant to getting Thorndyke a newspaper. This leads to a funny take-off of the "Psycho" shower scene, though I could have done without seeing Brooks in the buff. There is another funny take-off on the schoolyard scene from "The Birds" though it honestly feels wedged in for no narrative purpose. There are also references to non-Hitchcock films like "Call Northside 777" (the photo enlargement plot turn) and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".
Cloris Leachman deserves a medal for looking so horrendous as Nurse Diesel, though she plays the role quite similarly to her Frau Blucher in "Young Frankenstein". Harvey Korman has always been more a sketch comic and proves that again as Montague, as do Howard Morris as kindly Professor Lilloman (Little-Old-Man) and Ron Carey as double-speak sidekick Brophy. John Morris's music score is a fitting tribute to Hitchcock, though Paul Lohmann's cinematography seems particularly washed out in the print transfer on the DVD. There are no extras other than the original trailers for four other Brooks films.