High Anxiety

At a special preview, Sir Alfred Hitchcock's only criticism of the film to Mel Brooks concerned the shower scene: when the shower curtain is pulled off its rail, 13 shower curtain rings are used, whereas in Psycho (1960) he had used only 10.

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Sir Alfred Hitchcock suggested a scene in which the killer would chase Thorndyke to the harbor, where Thorndyke would try to escape by running and jumping onto a boat in the water, only to realize the boat was docked at the pier. Mel Brooks loved the idea but could not shoot it due to budget and time constraints.

PRODUCTION STORY · SOURCED

Mel Brooks hired the real bird handler from Sir Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) to work on this picture.

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One of Mel Brooks's favorite routines was doing an impression of Frank Sinatra's singing, and in this film he performs the song "High Anxiety" in an exaggerated version of Sinatra's singing style, dropping the first syllable of the word "anxiety." Brooks wrote the song and its lyrics. Brooks claimed that after the film's premiere he received offers to sing at Las Vegas casinos and clubs.

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Albert Whitlock's appearance as Arthur Brisbane is another tribute to Sir Alfred Hitchcock; Whitlock was a matte artist on many of Hitchcock's films.

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Gene Wilder was initially considered for the role of Dr. Richard Thorndyke, but scheduling forced Wilder to turn the role down.

CHARACTERS & CAST · SOURCED

Ron Carey's character Brophy takes his name from Edward Brophy, a character actor who played supporting roles in dozens of films in the 1940s; Carey also imitates Brophy's distinctive nasal voice.

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Jonathan Sanger was so busy throughout this film that he had to hire a babysitter for his two young sons. One night when he came home from work, she gave him a script written by her boyfriend and one of his friends. Sanger eventually bought it and brought it to Mel Brooks to produce. It was The Elephant Man (1980).

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In another reference to Sir Alfred Hitchcock, the spot where Dr. Thorndyke is attacked in the phone booth beneath the Golden Gate Bridge is Fort Point, the location of the key water rescue scene in Vertigo (1958).

EASTER EGGS & REFERENCES · SOURCED

Richard H. Thorndyke is reluctant to explain his middle name (Harpo) to Madeline Kahn. In Sir Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Cary Grant's Roger O. Thornhill indicates that the "O" stands for "nothing."

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The opening scene of Psycho (1960) shows the camera slowly moving through a hotel window into the room where Sam and Marion have just finished making love. In this film, after showing Dr. Thorndyke and Victoria in the motel room, Mel Brooks pays tribute to Sir Alfred Hitchcock by having the camera crash into the motel wall.

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At the time the film was shot, the famous Louis Vuitton brown-and-gold design was very popular. Victoria's similarly looking items (including a car, clothes and a teddy bear) are a subtle reference to it.

EASTER EGGS & REFERENCES · SOURCED

When the bellhop passes in front of the front desk, the receptionist says "Oh Dennis…" in the way Jack Benny signed off for Dennis Day on his radio and TV series. This was probably added by co-writer Barry Levinson as a tribute to Benny.

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In an interview given by his granddaughter Samantha, Mel Brooks admitted that he actually suffers from a fear of heights.

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Mel Brooks mentioned "Mrs. Nussbaum" as one of his patients. "Mrs. Nussbaum" was a radio character named Pansy Nussbaum, played by Minerva Pious in Fred Allen's famous "Allen's Alley" topical sketches. Two years later, a character in the comedy The Jerk (1979) stole a "Mrs. Nussbaum's credit card." There is also a character named "Mrs. Nussbaum" in the comedy Hell Baby (2013).

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In his speech at the conference, Dr. Thorndyke mentions the names Otto Rank and Krafft-Ebing. They were real psychoanalysts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Appearing on The Rich Eisen show in 2025, writer Barry Levinson described how he and Mel Brooks imitated the famous music from the "Psycho" shower scene while writing the parody scene. Brooks loved the idea of the bellhop making the same sounds while stabbing Thorndyke with a newspaper; the scene is played that way in the film.

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When Mel Brooks is attacked by the pigeons, he whistles the film's main theme.

DEEPER MEANING · SOURCED

When Brophy is asked to enlarge the photograph showing Dr. Thorndyke in the scenic elevator, he has to blow it up several times to reveal Thorndyke's face. This is a reference to Blow-Up (1966), the Hitchcockian mystery directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

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Co-writer and future director Barry Levinson plays the comic who "stabs" Dr. Richard Thorndyke with a folded newspaper, mimicking the shower scene in Psycho (1960).

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A B&B cocktail is Benedictine liqueur and brandy. The B&B&B that Thorndyke drinks was probably invented for the film, though it could also be a B&B mixed with bourbon.

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At the end of the film, the characters played by Mel Brooks and Madeline Kahn get married. In real life, Madeline Kahn was 16 years younger than Mel Brooks.

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Actors and actresses speaking directly to the audience often breaks the "fourth wall."

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