High Anxiety  

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High Anxiety is a 1977 American satirical comedy film produced and directed by Mel Brooks, who also plays the lead. This is Brooks' first film as a producer and first speaking lead role (his first lead role was in Silent Movie). Veteran Brooks ensemble members Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, and Madeline Kahn are also featured.

Plot

Arriving at Los Angeles International Airport, Dr. Richard Thorndyke has several odd encounters (such as a flasher impersonating a police officer, and a passing bus with a full orchestra playing inside it). He is taken by his camera-happy driver, Brophy, to the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous, where he has been hired as a replacement for Dr. Ashley, who died mysteriously–Brophy suspects foul play. Upon his arrival, Thorndyke is greeted by the staff, Dr. Charles Montague, Dr. Philip Wentworth, and Nurse Charlotte Diesel.

Thorndyke hears strange noises coming from Nurse Diesel's room and he and Brophy go to investigate. Diesel claims it was the TV, but it was actually a passionate session of BDSM with Dr. Montague. The next morning, Thorndyke is alerted by a light shining through his window, coming from the violent ward. Dr. Montague takes Thorndyke to the light's source, the room of patient Arthur Brisbane, who thinks he is a Cocker Spaniel.

Wentworth wants to leave the institute and argues with Diesel. After she lets him go, he drives home, but the car has been rigged to blast rock music loudly through the radio. Wentworth is trapped in his car, his ears hemorrhage, and he dies from a stroke, aggravated by the loud music.

Thorndyke and Brophy travel to San Francisco, where Thorndyke is to speak at a psychiatric convention. He checks into the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, where, much to his dismay, as he suffers from "high anxiety", he is assigned a room on the top floor, due to a reservation change by "Mr. MacGuffin". He pesters the bellboy with repeated requests for a newspaper, wanting to look in the obituaries for information concerning Dr. Wentworth's demise. He then takes a shower, during which the bellboy comes and in a frenzy mimics stabbing Thorndyke with the paper while screaming "Here's your paper! Happy now?! Happy?" The paper's ink runs down the drain.

After his shower, Victoria Brisbane, the daughter of Arthur Brisbane, bursts through the door. She wants help in removing her father from the institute. She says that Nurse Diesel and Dr. Montague are exaggerating the illnesses of wealthy patients so the institute can milk rich families of millions of dollars (through methods demonstrated in an earlier scene). Thorndyke agrees to help after discovering that the patient he met was not the real Arthur Brisbane.

To stop Thorndyke, Diesel and Montague hire "Braces", the silver-braced man who organized Dr. Ashley's and Wentworth's murders, to impersonate Thorndyke and shoot a man in the lobby. Now with the police after him, Thorndyke must prove his innocence. After he is attacked by pigeons, he meets up with Victoria, and realizes Brophy took a picture of the shooting. The real Thorndyke was in the elevator at the time, so he should be in the picture.

Acting on Thorndyke's behalf, Victoria contacts Brophy and requests him to enlarge the picture. Thorndyke is indeed visible in the picture, but Nurse Diesel and Montague capture Brophy and take him to the North Wing. Meanwhile, "Braces" finds Thorndyke at a phone booth calling Victoria, and tries to strangle him; however, Thorndyke is able to kill him with a shard of glass from the phone booth. Thorndyke and Victoria head back to Los Angeles where they rescue Brophy and see Montague and Diesel taking the real Arthur Brisbane to a tower to kill him.

Due to Thorndyke's high anxiety he is prevented from climbing the tower's steep stairs and helping Brisbane. But with the help of Professor Lilloman, he overcomes his phobia. Thorndyke knocks Diesel's orderly out a tower window, saving Brisbane. Nurse Diesel leaps out from the shadows and attacks Thorndyke with a broom, but falls out the tower window. She falls to her death, laughing hysterically and riding the broom. Dr. Montague appears from the shadows and gives up before being accidentally knocked unconscious by a trapdoor being opened. Victoria is reunited with her father, marries Thorndyke, and they go on their honeymoon.

Cast

• Mel Brooks as Dr. Richard Harpo Thorndyke. Throughout the film, Thorndyke suffers from a nervous disorder called "High Anxiety", a sort of mix of acrophobia and vertigo, and tries to overcome the affliction.
• Madeline Kahn as Victoria Brisbane, the daughter of Arthur Brisbane. She teams up with Thorndyke to save her father, who is believed to be insane.
• Cloris Leachman as Nurse Charlotte Diesel. She plans to institutionalize wealthy people, claim they are mentally ill, and extort millions of dollars from their families.
• Harvey Korman as Dr. Charles Montague. Smarmy and pompous, he is in cahoots with Nurse Diesel and is submissive in his relationship with her.
• Ron Carey as Brophy, Thorndyke's driver, sidekick and an avid photographer.
• Dick Van Patten as Dr. Philip Wentworth, a meek doctor who wants nothing to do with the institute's illegal activities .
• Howard Morris as Professor Lilloman, Thorndyke's mentor who had diagnosed him with the disorder "High Anxiety".
• Jack Riley as a desk clerk at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco.
• Charlie Callas as a deranged patient who thinks that he is a Cocker spaniel.
• Ron Clark as Zachary Cartwright, a patient believed to be deranged. Clark also worked as a writer on the film.
• Rudy De Luca as "Braces", an assassin hired by Diesel to murder Wentworth and Thorndyke. De Luca also worked as a writer on the film.
• Barry Levinson as Dennis the bellhop. Levinson also worked as a writer on the film.
• Lee Delano as Norton, an orderly working for Diesel and Montague. He has half a mustache because one of the patients supposedly attacked him.

Production and shooting locations

The film is a parody of the suspense films of Alfred Hitchcock: Spellbound, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds. The film was dedicated to Hitchcock, who worked with Brooks on the screenplay. It also contains spoofs of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup, and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, in the camera tracking through walls, and even James Bond films with an assassin who shares a similarity with Jaws.

thumb|The lobby of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco features prominently in the film Most of the story takes place at the fictional Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very Very Nervous, with exteriors filmed at Mount St. Mary's University in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles International Airport also appears at the beginning of the film. Near the middle of the movie, the story moves to San Francisco, taking advantage of settings used in Hitchcock's Vertigo, including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Mission San Juan Bautista tower. It also includes the then-new Hyatt Regency Hotel with its tall atrium lobby.

Mel Brooks took great pains to not only spoof Hitchcock films, but also to emulate the look and style of his pictures. In an interview he said, "I watch the kind of film we're making with the [director of photography], so he knows not to be frivolous. He's got to get the real lighting, the real texture. For High Anxiety, it was 'What is a Hitchcock film? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How does he light them? How long is a scene? What is the cutting? When does he bring things to a boil?' We just watch everything."

After viewing the film, Hitchcock sent Brooks a case containing six magnums of 1961 Château Haut-Brion wine with a note that read, "A small token of my pleasure, have no anxiety about this."