Synopsis
High Anxiety (1977) is a Mel Brooks comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Brooks directs and stars alongside Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, and Harvey Korman. The film is a full-scale spoof of Alfred Hitchcock — Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, and several others get their moment.
Dr. Richard Thorndyke arrives at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous to take charge as its new director. His own problem is acrophobia — a fear of heights, which turns out to be inconvenient in ways he couldn't have predicted. The staff behaves more erratically than the patients. Strange incidents keep staging themselves like scenes from a Hitchcock film. Someone, it seems, would prefer the new director didn't stay long.
Brooks made this as a love letter rather than a takedown — every reference is delivered with enough craft that the jokes land whether or not you've seen the originals. It holds up as a comedy on its own terms. Stream High Anxiety (1977) on iFILM.
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