High Anxiety/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • This troper's favorite Mel Brooks moment ever is in "High Anxiety", when Brooks' character makes a Startling Discovery, complete with dramatic string music... and then a bus drives by with an orchestra in it playing dramatic string music.
    • After that, anytime dramatic music is played, the characters look upwards in suspense.
  • Also hilarious is the moment where the camera zooms "through a window" to a dinner party, only to break the glass, complete with awkward pause from the dinner guests.
    • The gag comes back in the last scene as the camera pulls back too far and takes out the wall behind it.
  • The Psycho shower scene parody. From the moment Thorndike enters the shower you know it's coming, but probably won't predict the perfectly set up method that the parody takes. "That kid gets no tip!"
    • Even better? That's famous-comedy-director-to-be Barry Levinson.
  • The scene where Thorndike and Victoria disguise themselves as a cranky old Jewish couple to get past a security check, sneaking a gun by because the guards can't stand to be around their obnoxiousness anymore.
  • The Werewolf scene.
  • "Hey, Norton! Missing something? Hahahaha!!!"
  • Thorndyke having to answer a question about toilet training... while a doctor's young daughters are in the audience. "Are you referring to... number one, or cocky doody?"
  • When they first visit "Arthur Brisbane", who thinks he's a cocker spaniel....
  • Thorndike getting strangled in a phone book and Victoria is on the other end of the line thinking he's a kinky caller and she's getting turned on "Jeans? You're wearing jeans?"
  • I gottit! I gottit! I GOTTIT! ...I don't got it.