DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The visual transfer is offered in anamorphically enhanced widescreen and is mostly true to the original film’s design. However, it also reveals that film’s very low-budget origins. Indeed, Kentucky Fried Movie was shot on both film and videotape and the differences in these two mediums are frequently visible in terms of colour saturation, lighting and grain. Hence, the consistent transfer highlights the inconsistent original. Nevertheless, this accurately captures the harsh, ugly look of much American television in the 1970s most self-consciously and also neatly contributes to the idea of the film as an assembly of found footage (although recreated sketches in actuality) and correspondingly even as a mock social document: indeed as a time capsule of 70s pop-culture, the film indeed both fulfills and debunks this intention, thus flirting quite effectively with post-modernist sensibilities. Flesh tones may seem overly pronounced though, and the DVD transfer often looks either over saturated or faded, always appearing rather greasy. The blacks over the opening credits have a somewhat rusty feel and much of the movie has a 1970s naturalist aesthetic that points to an underlying coarseness and even obscene exploitation in American popular culture. However, there is nothing to distract from the endless and often crude sight gags as the transfer fully captures the look of such low-budget filmmaking of that era, complete with its flaws.
Sound
Although some sources list it as being in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, the sound transfer feels decidedly like its 1.0 mono origin. Thus, voices and sounds are almost constantly centered, with little real background spatial effects and minimal depth. However, this flatness of effect is again true to the original source material although the comedic sense of pointless aural spectacle in the disaster movie parody sequence may have been enhanced by a treatment re-targeting this for the home theatre technical phenomenon. Overall, it makes good use of sudden noises for comedic effect as well as deploying odd sounds of different tempos and contradictory impulses for often ironic counterpoint. Indeed, much of the film’s comedy thus comes through unexpected sounds (balloon noises, for instance, as breasts are fondled in a parody of film pornography) and a contrast between ordinary vocal tones and the absurdity of what is actually being said. For the prolonged Enter the Dragon section, the score also self-consciously parodies maestro film composer Lalo Schifrin’s original score to the Bruce Lee film and is a clever in-joke. Related humour comes from the counterpoint between muzak and the contents of the scenes it plays over, or from deliberate musical caricature. In short, it utilizes many sound forms for a rich source of comedy to match and enhance the sight gags. Although the sound transfer may be flat, the gags work. read more
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