2/9/07: RightWingTrashMan: Col. Harland SandersWhat are you having for dinner tonight? For the first time in ages, you can actually have some Kentucky Fried Chicken—and not just because your doctor told you to leave that stuff alone. We're very pleased to report that the formerly stodgy KFC chain has gone back to embracing the full glory of being, in fact, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Seriously, it says so right on the bucket. See for yourself at
KentuckyFriedChicken.com. Yes, that link will actually send you to KFC.com, but it’s a lot more fun to type in the full name.
For far too long, a health-conscious society has reduced Kentucky Fried Chicken to being a mere acronym. This is the perfect time for Kentucky Fried Chicken to return to their deep-fried roots. It’s the ultimate mocking of all the crap that this fine chain has had to endure from
those bimbos at PETA. “Hey,” the restaurants seem to be proclaiming, “not only are we abusing the chickens, but that’s just before we’re
frying them! Did you forget about that?
We’re frying them!”
Which all serves to honor Colonel Harland Sanders—the man who probably gave Anna Nicole Smith more pleasure than anyone else before her death.
It’s easy to simply salute Colonel Sanders as a great capitalist—as best illustrated by his famous reply when a member of ’60s act Country Joe & The Fish asked Sanders what he thought about hippies: “They eat fried chicken, don’t they?” Despite that clear tolerance, Colonel Sanders would soon become a pioneer as a politically incorrect advertising icon.
Typically, this made the Colonel a target of wild rumor. There were frequent false charges about an affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. Sander’s posthumous presence had a lot to do with the rumor that the chain’s change to “KFC” wasn’t just a marketing move to avoid the “fried” stigma. Cretins claimed that the chain’s use of mutated poultry—as seen in
Blood Freak—had prompted the government to ban the restaurants from legally describing their product as chicken. There are probably lots of PETA activists who’d still swear to that as gospel truth. Or just truth.
Being part of any advertising campaign is enough to make you worthy of RightWingTrash—especially in the week after the Super Bowl. Colonel Sanders, however, would also make many great contributions to schlock cinema. He sings the theme song to 1977’s
Checkered Flag or Crash, a
Gumball Rally rip-off most notable for the scene where manly driver Joe Don Baker ditches Leftist journalist Susan Sarandon alone in the Philippines.
Colonel Sanders would appear on film as one of the important American icons kidnapped by evil Commies in the amazing 1970 epic
The Phynx. He’s saved by an American rock band—which reminds us that Sanders gets rocking alongside some primal pretties in 1967’s
The Blast-Off Girls. That one was directed by pioneering splatter-film director Herschell Gordon Lewis, who always sought out deals where he could get free fried chicken for catering purchases. Kentucky Fried Chicken is also featured in Lewis’
Gruesome Twosome. (The director settled for the Church’s brand while filming
Year of the Yahoo!)
And as a crowning touch, Colonel Sanders is seen serving dinner to the heroes who are taking on the modern Nazis in 1970’s
Hell’s Bloody Devils. Honestly, PETA should be ashamed for attacking the legacy of this great American.
Make it your own: You probably already know the location of your nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now how about a Colonel Sanders Film Festival while you’re enjoying your meal? Well, forget it. Sanders' cinematic contributions have been sadly neglected as DVD releases. There’s
The Blast-Off Girls, but that’s about it. Even the Colonel’s 1967 appearance with Jerry Lewis in
The Big Mouth is only available
on VHS.
His iconic presence, however, is invoked in other fine films—but nothing beats the Colonel Sanders tribute found in the insane blaxploitation of
Darktown Strutters. (It’s pricey
on VHS, but we’ve seen some cheap DVDs selling in the dollar stores.) The film’s ersatz Colonel appears as a racist villain, but
Darktown Strutters is too goofy to be malevolent. Hopefully, the Colonel got to enjoy a screening before he passed away in 1980. He was 90 years old, too. Let’s see those vegetarians at PETA live that long—if they’d even want to.
