Trivia for
High Anxiety (1977) More at IMDbPro »

• This tribute to Alfred Hitchcock contains references to more than 10 of his films: see the links to other titles. Mel Brooks held a private preview of the movie for Hitchcock to see his reaction. When Hitchcock walked out at movie's end without saying a word, Brooks feared that Hitchcock hated the movie. But days later, Hitchcock sent a congratulatory case of wine to Brooks, knowing that Brooks was a wine connoisseur.
  
  
• The bird droppings were actually mayonnaise and chopped spinach. However, Mel Brooks reported to Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" that the helicopter spraying the fake bird droppings scared the pigeons so much that he believed half of the bird droppings were real.
  
  
• The appearance of Albert Whitlock as Arthur Brisbane is yet another of the film's many homages to Alfred Hitchcock; Whitlock was Hitchcock's special-effects man on several films.
  
  
• In another Alfred Hitchcock reference, the location where Dr. Thorndyke is attacked in the phone booth beneath the Golden Gate Bridge is Fort Point, where the crucial water rescue scene takes place in Vertigo (1958).
  
  
• Gene Wilder was originally considered for the part of Dr. Richard Thorndyke, but scheduling forced Wilder to turn the role down.
  
  
• In yet another reference to Alfred Hitchcock, Dr. Thorndyke is told that a "Mr. MacGuffin" changed his room reservation. Hitchcock's MacGuffins were objects or devices which drove the plot but which were otherwise inconsequential and could be forgotten once they had served their purpose.
  
  
• Richard H. Thorndike is hesitant to reveal his middle name (Harpo) to Madeline Kahn. In Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Cary Grant's Roger O. Thornhill never reveals his middle name.
  
  
• Mel Brooks tells Madeline Kahn over the telephone to meet him at the "North by Northwest" corner of the park.
  
  
• Cloris Leachman's enormous prosthetic breasts are a reference to Nurse Ratched's ample chest in the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which is set in an insane asylum.
  
  
• Ron Carey's character, Brophy, is obviously named after Edward Brophy, a character actor in the classic Hollywood era that played sidekicks in dozens of movies.
  
  

Related Links