High Anxiety (1977)

A parody aimed at Alfred Hitchcock, so it pays off in proportion to how many of his films you know. Brooks plays a psychiatrist with a crippling fear of heights who takes over an institute run by doctors shadier than their patients, and the gags lift whole sequences from Spellbound, Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds. Watch at least Vertigo and Psycho first and it becomes one of his sharpest films, with Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman as the fearsome Nurse Diesel and Harvey Korman in support. The film is dedicated to Hitchcock, who left a private screening without a word and then sent Brooks a note of approval days later.