Memorable moments from the film Airplane! (Open spoilers)

[Alpha_Twit]

Marginally thread related but I thought I’d share.

It’s been at least 15 years since I watch Airplane! and this thread got me thinking of it. The quickest way for me to view it would be to buy it from iTunes so I check it out. $4.99 in HD, damn skippy I’ll bite. I’ve spent $5 on dumber things since breakfast. I notice they also offer Airplane! II so I check out the price and it was $14.99. Three times the price for a grotesquely inferior movie that almost gave me cancer of the perineum. Granted the movie guest stars Shatner’s toupee so that’s got to be worth a couple of bucks just by itself. But still, somebody needs to reexamine their pricing.

[What_Exit]

Rumack : You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.

Elaine Dickinson : A hospital? What is it?

Rumack : It’s a big building with patients, but that’s not important right now.

[Railer13]

@cmkeller

Railer13:

I think these were meant to be Italian.

FWIW, this page thinks they were Spanish:

There are two lighted signs in the aircraft where the Spanish is just phonetic English. “Fasten Seatbelt” and “No Smoking” are written in English in one shot. Underneath them are “Putana da Seatbeltz” (“put on the seatbelts”) and “El No A You Smoko”. Then during a dive, there’s “Return to Seat” / “Gobacken Sidonna” (“Go back and sit down”).

[Kent_Clark]

If the rest of the movie had been unfunny, it would still be remembered for the opening scene.

[pulykamell]

@JcWoman

The entire movie is a spoof of 1970’s disaster movies, and most directly a 1957 drama called Zero Hour. My husband and I once rented Zero Hour because we were curious and by god the parody was SO CLOSE! We had trouble not laughing though the entire drama because it kept hitting so close to the Airplane! lines (really vica versa).

Here’s a run-down of the similar scenes on Youtube.

[Mahaloth]

@Qadgop_the_Mercotan

Young Boy with Coffee: Cream?

Little Girl: No, thank you, I take it black, like my men.

Am I right that this scene is only tv edits of the movie? My wife and I watched this on disc a few years ago and I think this moment is not in the version we saw.

[Qadgop_the_Mercotan]

@Mahaloth

Am I right that this scene is only tv edits of the movie? My wife and I watched this on disc a few years ago and I think this moment is not in the version we saw.

I remember seeing it in the theater and it’s on my VCR and DVD copy, IIRC.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Have you ever seen a grown man naked?

[Hypno-Toad]

@KneadToKnow

<Kitten Natividad’s chest>

That was her?

[KneadToKnow]

@Hypno-Toad

That was her?

Yes and no. According to IMDb:

In an interview, Kitten Natividad revealed that her uncredited cameo was for the shot showing gelatin dessert wiggling on a tray below her jiggling breasts. She was not the nude that jumped into camera range.

So it depends on which “that” you had in mind.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Sheeeeeit! [Golly!]

[cmkeller]

@Railer13

FWIW, this page thinks they were Spanish:

That page can be edited by anyone. I’ll grant you that the smoking one seems like it could be intended as “bad Spanish”, but the seatbelt one and the sit down one is almost certainly meant to mock the mode of speech common among blue-collar Italian-Americans (not Italian as in the language spoken in Italy itself), the “translation” being similar in spirit to the African-Americans needing a translator for “jive.”

[Temporary_Name]

@cmkeller

That page can be edited by anyone. I’ll grant you that the smoking one seems like it could be intended as “bad Spanish”, but the seatbelt one and the sit down one is almost certainly meant to mock the mode of speech common among blue-collar Italian-Americans (not Italian as in the language spoken in Italy itself), the “translation” being similar in spirit to the African-Americans needing a translator for “jive.”

I concur.
New York/New Jersey Italian/ perhaps even Boston
(Immigrant broken English, not modern day Guido speak)

[HeyHomie]

“Have you ever seen a grown man naked? … Do you like movies about gladiators? … Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

That series of jokes would never fly (no pun intended) today.

I wonder if the young actor playing the little boy in that scene was given any context as to what those jokes were about?

[Miller]

@HeyHomie

“Have you ever seen a grown man naked? … Do you like movies about gladiators? … Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

That series of jokes would never fly (no pun intended) today.

Family Guy’s still on TV, right? Do they still run episodes with this guy?

[Railer13]

@Temporary_Name

I concur.
New York/New Jersey Italian/ perhaps even Boston
(Immigrant broken English, not modern day Guido speak)

Fair enough. I"m obviously not that well-traveled.

But I’ll just say that most, and probably all, bilingual signs that I’ve seen in an airport or in an airplane in the USA were English and Spanish.

[cmkeller]

Of course, because in real life, Americans who speak English with a regional or ethnic accent need no translation. That’s why it’s funny to have subtitles/translations for those.

[dalej42]

@Alpha_Twit

Marginally thread related but I thought I’d share.

It’s been at least 15 years since I watch Airplane! and this thread got me thinking of it. The quickest way for me to view it would be to buy it from iTunes so I check it out. $4.99 in HD, damn skippy I’ll bite. I’ve spent $5 on dumber things since breakfast. I notice they also offer Airplane! II so I check out the price and it was $14.99. Three times the price for a grotesquely inferior movie that almost gave me cancer of the perineum. Granted the movie guest stars Shatner’s toupee so that’s got to be worth a couple of bucks just by itself. But still, somebody needs to reexamine their pricing.

Both are free on Amazon Prime, not sure what type of offers they have if you’re not a member.

I watched Airplane II as well, it’s good but not great.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@HeyHomie

…I wonder if the young actor playing the little boy in that scene was given any context as to what those jokes were about?

Nope. Here’s a nice 2010 interview with him: Interview: Ross Harris, a/k/a The Little Kid In Airplane!, Reminisces About Peter Graves, a/k/a The Creepy Pilot Who Asked Him If He'd Ever Seen A Grown Man Naked - The Village Voice

And here’s our earlier thread about the movie: The comedy Airplane! was released 30 years ago! Surely you can't be serious! - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board

[Hypno-Toad]

I was thinking of the topless shot. But now I remember the jiggling jello joke.