Why not throw in Wrongfully Accused while you’re at it?
(I gotta admit, the scene where the diesel locomotive was doing its damndest to run down Leslie Neilson was pretty funny.)
You are correct. I live about 5 minutes away.
So you might say it’s a hot rack.
I haven’t seen KFM or Top Secret! in a long time. One of them had a scene in a prison, the alarm was going off, but if you looked closely there was a guy in the corner making the alarm sound into a megaphone. It’s another of those very subtle sight gags, but I can’t remember which movie it was in.
IIRC that’s from “A Fistful of Yen” in KFM.
Yeah. The guy also comes into Dr. Klahn’s bedroom with the megaphone to alert him.
A month ago, this thread inspired me to redouble my efforts to hunt down and buy a copy – any copy – of Zero Hour!, the movie on which Airplane! was based.
I found an obscure Canadian site that sold rare videos. I ordered it.
Just last night, the movie finally showed up on my doorstep in VHS format.
WOO HOO!! Zero Hour! !! With Ted Stryker, his wife (!) Ellen – and his son, Joey, who’d never seen a cockpit before!! (We never do get to learn whether the original Joey had ever seen a grown man naked, though.)
tracer
Thanks for revivng this thread.
Yes I got to see “Zero Hour” and it is impossible to look at it as a drama anymore isn’t it?
Notice some of the lines weren’t changed at all?
“Stryker, that’s got to be the lousiest landing in the history of this airport”.
How does it handle? “Sluggish - like a wet sponge”.
“We’ve got to find someone who knows how to fly a plane … and didn’t have fish for dinner.” (followed by ominous thunder clap)
A very subtle similarity between the 2 movies is that non-acting athletes (football player Crazy Legs Hirsch and basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabar) are given roles as pilot in one movie and co-pilot in the other. By non-acting athletes, I mean athletes who have rarely appeared in films (unlike Roosevelt Grier, Joe Namath, etc)
And to stick to the OP, here’s a quote from “Police Squad”.
This is from the boxing episode in which Leslie Nielsen goes undercover to investigate corruption in that sport. They really skewer a boxing movie cliche in this scene, in which Frank Drebin (posing as a boxer’s manager) tries to goad the champion into a fight.
Drebin: “My boy says he can beat the living daylights out of you !!”
The Champion: “Wow, he must be pretty good !!”
What do you mean some of the lines?
Watching Zero Hour! was almost like watching Airplane! with all the punchlines and sight gags taken out. Over half the dialog I recognized as lines used in Airplane!, practically verbatim!
Right down to the exclamation point at the end of the movie’s title. (And the propeller engine sounds made by the plane, of course.)
“… but some of us, particularly me, would like to buy you a drink and shake your hand.”
Verbatim!
Followed by Stryker’s gal repeating into the radio mike, “Sluggish – like a wet sponge.”
Verbatim!
Well, okay, actually the ominous thunderclap didn’t happen there in the original. The only ominous thunderclap I remember seeing in Zero Hour! happened when Ted was having a flashback to his WW2 gaffe while the plane he was flying was on final approach.
But other verbatim dialog I remember hearing in Zero Hour! include:
“Can you fly this plane and land it?”
“You’re a member of this crew. Can you face some unpleasant facts.”
“This plane has 4 engines. It’s an entirely different kind of flying, altogether!”
“You’ve got to help him get the feel for that airplane on the way in. Then you’ll have to talk him onto the approach – so help me, you’ll have to talk him right down to the ground!”
“Because of my mistake, six men didn’t return from that raid.”
“It’s because of my war record isn’t it?”
‘No, you’re the only one keeping that alive.’
“You expect me to believe that?”
‘It’s the truth. [What bothers us] is your record since the war.’ (From another place in the dialog:) “Different cities, different jobs” (From the previous place in the dialog:) ‘And not one of them shows you can handle any real responsibility.’
“Don’t you feel anything for me anymore?”
‘It takes so much to make love last. Most of all it takes respect, and I can’t live with a man I don’t respect.’
“Would you like a little whiskey, ma’am?”
‘Certainly not.’
Incidentally, I think the two Jive speakers in *Airplane!*were inspired by the Irish football enthusiasts in Zero Hour!, who kind of spoke their own dialect as well.
I like the sight gag in Airplane where Otto springs a leak and Elaine has to find the manual inflate valve, near his belt. The doctor walks in, looks shocked, and walks out again. Next scene has both Elaine and blow-up autopilot smoking cigarettes. I love when the woman gets sick and the doctor starts taking eggs out of her mouth and cracking them, releasing chirping birds, accompanied by magician-like hand flourishes. I love Kramer’s line “Flying a plane is like riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.” I like the sight gag of Kramer with sunglasses, then rips them off and he is wearing another pair underneath. I love the sight gag of where Ted is painting a picture in the hospital of a soldier diving out of an exploding Jeep and it pans over to show that it is a real model posing in a contorted pose. The news programs were also brilliant: the Chinese news program with a traditional watercolor of an airplane crashing in the background; the Samoan one where the guy is pounding the drums and then shifts to the new camera and pounds a new set of slightly higher drums a little faster.
The line from Airplane II where Elaine asks the judge “Do you know what it’s like to laugh like that?” and the judge deadpans back “Yes, yes I do” gets used around here all the time.
My favorite line from Top Secret! which I use at every given opportunity:
Nigel: The raid is planned for next Sunday.
Chocolate Mousse: Next Sunday! That’s Simchas Torah!
“Airplane!” also borrowed a few lines from yet another movie - “Knute Rockne - All American” (1940) Here is a link to the quotes page from that movie:
If you remember, Leslie Nielsen (Doctor Rumack) makes almost exactly the same speech except he changes the name “Rock” to “Doc” and he says win one for the “Zipper” (for George Zipp).
*And the last thing he said to me, “Rock,” he said, “sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock,” he said, "but *
___ I won’t smell too good that’s for sure.
What really makes that hilarious, are the final 8 words in the spoiler box that are definitely NOT from “Knute Rockne”.
Strange how adding a few words can change that rather sad speech into a laugh riot.
Sigh … that “Win Just One for the Zipper” scene is the most inspiring moment in Airplane!. It still brings me to tears and gives me goose bumps ever time I watch it. And it’s inspiring for a totally different reason than the same scene in Knute Rockne, All American – in the Airplane! version, it was Ted Striker’s lifelong vindication. “The odds were against us, but we went in anyway. I’m glad. The Captain made the right decision.” … sigh
I was crestfallen to learn that this scene has no parallel whatsoever in Zero Hour!. The most inspiring moment in the movie, and it was nowhere to be found in the original! Hmph!
tracer, try to take some solace from Airplane! 's end credits, which very sagely state “In case of tornado go to the southwest corner of the basement” or words to that effect.
You sure you’re not thinking of Top Secret!, or one of the other ZAZ movies?
Airplane doesn’t have anything resembling tornado advice anywhere in its credits. Just “Gripology,” “Generally In Charge of a Lot of Things,” “Author of A Tale of Two Cities,” and the legendary admonition “SO THERE” at the end of its legal notice.
tracer
I’m glad “Aiplane!” did not follow the entire script of “Zero Hour”, otherwise the ZAZ collaboration would not seem as creative as it truly is.
And speaking of crazy credits, one of my all-time favorites (though I forget which ZAZ movie this was):
Foreez … A Jolly Good Fellow
Come on admit it - everyone reading this is laughing right now right ?
I can’t believe that this whole thread didn’t mention the best sight gag in all of Airplane! – when Elaine was in the Peace Corps training the native women in techniques of food preservation, and the camera pans back and shows the women using Tupperware.
“This Seals-In-Rite container keeps hot dog buns fresh for days.”
From that same episode:
Not to mention:
Frank: It’s the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Jane Spencer: Goodyear?
Frank: No, the worst.
Mayor: Now Drebin, I don’t want any trouble like you had on the South Side like last year, that’s my policy.
Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in front of a full view of 100 people, I shoot the bastards, that’s my policy.
Mayor: That was a Shakesphere In The Park Production of Julius Caesar, you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!
According to the IMDb, variations of the tornado credit are used in Airplane! and the first two Naked Guns.