I always thought that Airplane! was a brilliant parody of a specific sub-genre of disaster films. Namely movies like Airport, a 1970 film that gets 4 stars on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s not the whole story, though. Shoot, it’s not really even the story at all.
The Zucker brothers saw a movie called Zero Hour! and thought it was so unintentionally hilarious that they just had to remake it. And they did. They acquired the rights to the film and sat down to produce a faithful adaptation of Zero Hour!, just with jokes. It’s faithful almost shot by shot and line by line, which can be seen here. (Do yourself a favor and click on that youtube link - it’s hilarious)
There’s another thing they did, too. Zero Hour! had a bit of stunt casting in that they hired Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch to play a crew member in the cockpit. Crazylegs was a hall of fame football player, and when audiences first saw Zero Hour, it was tough for them not to be taken out of the moment and think "Hey! That’s future hall of famer “Crazylegs” Hirsch. I will give you one guess who the Zucker brothers got to play that role.
Zero Hour! was based on the Canadian made-for-TV movie Flight into Danger. It was based on a play by John Castle and Arthur Hailey. Hailey also wrote the novel Airport which, when made into a movie, really started off the disaster movie craze of the '70s.
Fitting subject matter for what Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker wanted to do.
The singing, guitar playing nun/sick little girl on the way to hospital was from “Airport '75.” “Zero Hour” was remade as “Terror in the Sky” (1971) (TV Movie). Trivia good!
I was in an airport twice in the last two weeks (going and returning from vacation) and every time the No Parking announcements came over the PA, I kept hearing the “argument” sequence where the one announcer tells the other to have an abortion.
I always thought it was odd in Airplane! when Gunderson is checking the Radarange - he’s wearing a leather jacket. It doesn’t fit the movie, like they let the actor just wear what he wore coming in. But when I saw Zero Hour!, the same character is also wearing a leather jacket. (probably what he wore coming to work…). So it seems ZZA were doing that deliberately.
[QUOTE=Dr. Baird]
Our survival hinges on one thing - finding someone who not only can fly this plane, but didn’t have fish for dinner.
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Dr. Rumak]
The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner.
[/quote]
Me, I had lasagna, but I can’t fly a plane (with ANY number of engines).
Watching Zero Hour! is a hilarious experience. At the end of the “It takes many things to make love last” scene, you can practically hear Dana Andrews think, “What a pisser!”
Hey, isn’t that Gen. Jack Ripper in the role of Rex Kramer?? In retrospect, it all makes sense now…
“Rex Kramer” was, like “Samuel L. Bronkowitz,” a joke name that the Zucker brothers had been using for years before they made Airplane!
In ***The Kentucky Fried Movie, *** there’s a segment featuring a nerdy air traffic controller named Rex Kramer who tests his manhood and shows his cojones by approaching a bunch of ghetto thugs, screaming the N-word, and then running away at breakneck speed.
It was a spoof of Thrill Seekers, an old 1970s TV show hosted by Chuck Connors- the kind that normally showed daredevils doing risky stunts on motorcycles or hang gliders or whatever.
