"Surely you can't be serious?""I am serious, and don't call me Shirley"
Airplane! took the world by storm 25 years ago today. The twisted airliner seen in movie posters was only a hint of the twisted plot found in the movie. The airliner was so full of sight gags, voice gags, and double entendres that multiple viewings is in order to catch them all-or as many as can be caught.
The movie was the creation of three men from the Milwaukee area, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, who had grown up together and tried their off-beat comedy on each other. Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 and you have a picture of these three individuals together making wise comments about movies and TV shows they are watching. That zaniness is evident in their movies, beginning with Kentucky Fried Movie and found in Airplane and Airplane II and the Naked Gun and Hot Shots films.
This is not a film that follows the conventions of political correctness. It was designed as a lampoon of practically every disaster movie ever made. The major influence for this lampoon, however, was the movie Zero Hour. Many of Airplane's lines are taken directly from Zero Hour.
The budget for Airplane was about US$3.5 Million. Abrahams and the Zucker brothers admitted the film was low budget and that they took every precaution to avoid spending too much money. Yet the film earned over US$80 Million at the box office. Another US$40 Million came in rental income.
The movie starts out at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Robert Hays plays an ex-fighter pilot named Ted Stryker who lost most of his squadron during a raid. Now a cab driver, Ted is afraid of airplanes. We meet Ted's girlfriend Elaine, played by Julie Hagerty, who is a stewardess (not "flight attendant"). Elaine has decided to move out of their apartment and leave Ted. Captain Oveur is played by Peter Graves, who is the pilot of the airplane. The head of Chicago Flight Control, Steve McCroskey, is played by Lloyd Bridges. He calls in a veteran pilot, Rex Kramer, who is played by Robert Stack, to talk Ted Striker through flying the plane. In a plot twist Rex Kramer was Ted Striker's commanding officer during the war and there is no love lost between the two. Howard Jarvis, the author of California's property tax initiative Proposition 13, plays the man who patiently waits in the back of Striker's cab throughout the movie. Is it possible he is still awaiting-and the meter is still running?
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