Rating: C+
Dir: Mel Brooks.
Star: Mel Brooks, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Harvey Korman.
I do have to wonder if this is an example of being too close to your topic. This opens with a dedication to Alfred Hitchcock, who was also heavily involved as Brooks wrote the screenplay. It’s a spoof which is so respectful of the target, as to end up toothless as satire. Its subject sent Brooks a case of wine and a note of approval after the premiere, which says a lot. This is not a bad Hitchcock movie on its own terms. It adopts many of the tropes you’ll know, if you have a cursory knowledge of the works made by the master of suspense – such as the everyday man, caught up in evil machinations beyond his ken.
Here, it’s Dr. Richard Thorndyke (Brooks), newly appointed head of the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous. The previous head died in mysterious circumstances, and the behaviour of staff members Dr. Charles Montague (Korman) and head nurse Charlotte Diesel (Leachman) is particularly suspicious. While Thorndyke is attending a convention in San Francisco, the pair hatch a plan to dispose of him, framing him for murder. Complicating matters is Thorndyke’s vertigo, giving the film its title. The climax sees him having to face and overcome his fear, or plummet to his doom. Almost all of which feels like it could be taken wholesale from one or another of Hitchcock’s works.
The comedy mostly comes around the edges, such as an undeniably inspired recreation of the shower scene from Psycho. In this version, a disgruntled hotel worker – played by future Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson – delivers a newspaper, replacing Norman Bates and his carving knife (top). It ends in ink from the paper running down the plug hole. Half the fun comes from the careful set-up, with the employee gradually pushed past his breaking point. Also as obvious, a scene from The Birds which ends in Thorndyke covered in pigeon shit. [According to Brooks’s autobiography, that was the only scene which made Hitchcock crack up at the premiere] I suspect there are likely others, but my knowledge of the director and his fifty-plus films is relatively shallow. This feels more specific than, say, Blazing Saddles, where the target was general, widespread Western tropes.
There are occasions where the movie is inventive on its own terms. The best moment for me, sees Thorndyke assessing a patient, while behind him, Montague is pretending to be a werewolf, complete with fake teeth. Understandably, this is freaking the patient out. But in general, this isn’t a parody, and certainly not a spoof, so much as a loving homage. Picking on Hitchcock makes sense, in that he was one of the few directors at the time who was genuinely “known”, this being before Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese had taken full flight. Maybe Kubrick might have been a better choice. Between Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and his infamous working methods, there might have been more scope for satire.