Tag Archives: David Zucker

The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994, directed by Peter Segal)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Mad bomber Rollo Dillon (Fred Ward) has been hired by terrorists to bomb a major American institution.  Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Detective Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) know that there’s only one man who can handle this job and his name is Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen).  Frank, however, has retired from Police Squad and promised his wife, Jane (Priscilla Presley), that he is through with police work.

At heart, Frank remains a cop.  He even dreams of shoot-outs.  When he tries to do police work without Jane noticing, it backfires on him.  Even though Frank lies and claims that he’s just having an affair, Jane leaves him.  Frank, with nothing better to do, goes into prison undercover to gain Rollo’s confidence.  After Rollo and Frank escape, Frank discovers that Rollo and his girlfriend (Anna Nicole Smith) is planning on bombing the Academy Awards!

The Naked Gun 33 1/3 is the weakest of the original Police Squad films, which is to say that it’s still pretty funny, even if some of the jokes no longer feel as fresh as they did in the previous films.  It opens with a brilliant send-up of the shoot-out from The Untouchables and it ends with a perfect parody of the Academy Awards.  (Pia Zadora singing This Could Be The Start Of Something Big is funny because it’s exactly the sort of thing that used to happen at the Oscars.)  It’s in the middle section that the film drags, though there are still things that made me laugh, like a flashback to Frank, Ed, and Nordberg in the 70s.  David Zucker did not return to direct this installment and his absence is definitely felt.

Leslie Nielsen is as funny as ever and he’s well-matched with George Kennedy and Priscila Presley.  (OJ Simpson’s presence is as awkward as ever.)  Fred Ward plays his villainous role straight, a smart move.  But then you’ve got Anna Nicole Smith, who was such a terrible actress that her presence in the film doesn’t even work as a joke.  Whenever Smith shows up, the film grinds to a halt.  It’s the worst type of stunt casting.

This was Leslie Nielsen final performance as Frank Drebin.  Even in a lesser film, he was still a comedic treasure.

The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell Fear (1991, directed by David Zucker)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Frank Drebin is back!

Now separated from Jane (Priscilla Presley) and working in Washington D.C., Frank (Leslie Nielsen) finds himself investigating a bombing at the offices of Dr. Albert S. Meinheimer (Richard Griffiths), an advocate of renewable energy who has just been put in charge of America’s energy policies by President George H.W. Bush (John Roarke, who was better-known for playing Ronald Reagan on Friday’s).  With the help of Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Officer Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), Drebin’s investigation leads him to Quentin Haspburg (Robert Goulet), an oilman who is plotting on replacing Dr. Meinheimer with a double.  It also leads him back to Jane, who is now working as an assistant to Meinheimer and being wooed by Hapsburg.

The Naked Gun 2 1/2 is a worthy sequel to the first Naked Gun.  It’s more plot-heavy than the first film and some of the jokes feel a little bit too familiar but it’s still a very funny film.  That’s largely due to Neilsen, Kennedy, and Presley, all of whom really commit to playing their absurd characters.  (Robert Goulet gives a game performance but he really can’t match Ricardo Montalban’s villainous turn in the first movie.)  Nielsen was probably the only actor alive who could keep a straight face even while hitting Barbara Bush in the face while opening a door and then struggling to eat lobster at a state dinner.  As was often the case with the ZAZ films (even though Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker didn’t have anything to do with the screenplay of the sequel), the funniest moments are also the most random and the stupidest.  I laughed a lot harder than I should have at Leslie Neilsen struggling with a very small towel that had been thrown against his face.  And don’t worry, O.J. Simpson fans.  Nordberg gets injured in this movie too.

Leslie Nielsen was one of those actors who could make anything funny.  Whether he was delivering his hard-boiled dialogue or doing absurd physical comedy with an absolutely straight face, it was impossible not to laugh when Leslie Nielsen was onscreen.  He was a true cinematic treasure.

 

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988, directed by David Zucker)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Let’s take a moment to appreciate Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), a true American hero.

Even though Frank is just a Los Angeles cop, he still goes to the Middle East and disrupts a conference of America’s greatest enemies.  He beats up Fidel Castro.  He knocks out Gadafi and Yasser Arafat.  He cleans Gorbachev’s head.  (“I knew it!” he says as the birthmark disappears.)  He takes out Idi Amin and he sends the Ayatollah Khomeini through a window.  Thirty-seven years ago, this scene opened The Naked Gun and, after all that time, it is still funny because Leslie Nielsen plays it all with a straight face, delivering his silly lines without flinching.  It’s also interesting that none of the leaders taken down by Frank Drebin are around anymore.  Khomeini died just a few months after this film came out.  Gorbachev was the last to go, in 2022, by which time he was no longer an enemy.  Consider it the Frank Drebin Effect.  He’s making the world safe for democracy.

When Drebin returns to Los Angeles, he’s informed by Captain Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) that Police Squad has been put in charge of security for a visit from Queen Elizabeth (Jeanette Charles) and that Officer Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) is in the hospital and suspected of being a dirty cop.  The Mayor (Nancy Marchand) doesn’t want Los Angeles to be embarrassed by a police scandal before the Queen arrives so Drebin has 24 hours to exonerate Nordberg.  Drebin’s attempt to clear Nordberg’s name leads him to a shipping magnate (Ricardo Montalban) who has come up with a diabolical scheme to assassinate the Queen at a baseball game.  It also leads to love between Drebin and Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley).

Though Liam Neeson did a fine job in the recent reboot, there really is only one Frank Drebin and his name is Leslie Nielsen.  The original Naked Gun is nearly 40 years old and, even if some of the jokes are dated, it’s still laugh out loud funny.  Most of the credit has to go to Leslie Nielsen and ability to deliver even the most bizarre bits of dialogue with natural authority, gravitas and a straight face.  Whether he’s mumbling his way through the National Anthem, paying an informer for information, or hamming it up as an umpire, Nielsen is never less than hilarious.  By the end of the movie, it’s impossible to look at Nielsen without laughing.  Kennedy, Presely, and Montalban also generate their share of laughs.  John Houseman has a great cameo as an unflappable driving instructor.  (“Now, extend your middle finger.”)  As for OJ Simpson, he doesn’t seem to be in on the joke like the rest of the cast but he does frequently get injured and re-injured throughout the movie and there’s definitely some pleasure to be found in that.

(When Simpson died, director David Zucker said, “His acting was a lot like his murdering: He got away with it, but no one believed him.”  That sounds about right.)

Liam Neeson made for a fine Frank Drebin, Jr.  I hope he has many more adventures.  But the greatest Frank Drebin will always be Leslie Nielsen and the original Naked Gun will always be one of my favorite comedies.  Sometimes, it’s good just to laugh.

Thank you, David Zuker.

Thank you, Jerry Zucker.

Thank you, Jim Abrahams.

And most of all, thank you, Leslie Nielsen.

Celebrate Danny DeVito’s birthday with this scene from RUTHLESS PEOPLE (1986)! 🎉🎂

Posted on by Bradley Crain

One of my all-time favorite comedies is the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker 80’s classic, RUTHLESS PEOPLE! I’ll never forget watching it with my mom when I was a teenager. She laughed so hard, which made it loads of fun for me! I’ve been a fan of Danny DeVito ever since. As a matter of fact, DeVito is turning 81 today, which means he’s only a month older than my dad. Enjoy my friends!

Airplane! (1980, directed by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Airplane!, which may be the funniest movie ever made, has made me laugh every time that I’ve watched it.  And I’ve watched it a lot!

Whenever I’m getting ready to travel for my day job, I watch Airplane!  Whenever I’m going to Baltimore or West Virginia for the holidays, I watch Airplane!  Whenever I’m in a bad mood and I need something lighten me up, I watch Airplane!  Whenever I’m in a good mood and I want to be in an even better mood, I watch Airplane!

I can’t remember how old I was when I first saw Airplane! but I know I wasn’t yet ten.  While a lot of the humor went over my head at that young age, it did not matter because I laughed at all the sight gags, like the heart hopping around on the doctor’s desk and the line of passengers waiting to “calm down” the hysterical woman.  I laughed when Ted Stryker (Robert Hays) and Elaine (Julie Haggerty) got covered in seaweed while making out on the beach.  I laughed at the people dying while listening to Ted’s story, even though I didn’t fully understand that it was because of Ted boring them to death.  I loved it when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar got annoyed with the kid in the cockpit, even though young me really didn’t know who Kareem was other than he was a basketball player.  Otto the autopilot was the coolest character around.  Stephen Stucker’s Johnny made me laugh with his nonstop energy.  “Excuse me, stewardess, I speak Jive.”  “And don’t call me Shirley.”  “It looks like I picked the wrong time to stop sniffing glue.”  Every time I heard them, I laughed at all of those lines.  I didn’t have to understand why Lloyd Bridges was suddenly upside down.  I just knew it was funny.

As I got older and rewatched the film, I started to pick up on the humor that earlier went over my head.  I traveled to Turkey when I was twelve and our tour guide spent an hour telling us that Midnight Express was not a fair representation of her country.  After that, I suddenly understood why Captain Oveur (Peter Graves) wanted to know if Joey had ever been to a Turkish prison.  I came to appreciate Julie Hagerty and Lorna Patterson as the two flight attendants.  Airplane! still made me laugh but I came to understand that it was also a love story.  What adolescent boy watching Airplane! didn’t want to be Robert Hays, not only landing the plane but also getting kiss Julie Hagerty at the end of the movie?

And then, as I learned more about the movies, I realized that Airplane! was a pitch perfect parody of the disaster genre and I came to understand the brilliance of casting actors like Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and especially Leslie Nielsen in this film.  From the first time I saw the movie, Nielsen always made me laugh because he had the best lines and he delivered them with deadpan perfection.  But, as I got older, I came to understand that Nielsen was doing more than just saying funny things.  He was sending up his entire career.  I’m a part of the generation who grew up laughing at Leslie Nielsen the comedy superstar and it’s always strange for me to see him in one of his older, serious roles.  I have Airplane! to thank for that.

There’s so much to say about Airplane!  I could write a thousand words just talking about my favorite jokes and one-liners or how much I enjoyed Stryker’s flashbacks.  It’s my favorite movie and one that still makes me laugh even though I know all of the jokes by heart.  (I’ve always thought Howard Jarvis waiting for Stryker to return to the taxi was one of the best, though underrated, jokes in the movie.)  Airplane! is close to 50 years old and it’s still just as funny today as when I first saw it.

In fact, I think I’ll go watch it right now!

RUTHLESS PEOPLE (1986) – In remembrance of Jim Abrahams

Posted on by Bradley Crain

It made me sad when I saw that writer/director Jim Abrahams had passed away on November 26, 2024 at 80 years of age. Growing up in the 1980’s, Mr. Abrahams is responsible for some of my favorite comedies. AIRPLANE, TOP SECRET, and THE NAKED GUN would not exist without Jim Abrahams. As much as I love all of those movies, my personal favorite film that Jim Abrahams co-directed is RUTHLESS PEOPLE. I remember when our family rented this film and watched it in the ‘80’s. We thought it was so funny. I specifically remember my mom laughing out loud on multiple occasions as the ridiculous scenario played out. That was a fun movie night in the Crain household. 

RUTHLESS PEOPLE is about a rich businessman named Sam Stone (Danny DeVito) who truly hates his wife Barbara (Bette Midler), and hatches a plan to kill her so he can inherit her money. Unfortunately he runs into a couple of problems. First, his mistress Carol (Anita Morris) knows about the plan, so she and her dimwitted boy toy Earl (Bill Pullman) want to film Sam dumping his wife’s body so they can blackmail him for millions. Second, before Sam can execute his plan, Barbara is kidnapped and held for a ransom of $500,000 by Ken and Sandy Kressler (Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater). It seems that Sam stole Sandy’s idea for the spandex miniskirt, screwed them out of millions with a handshake deal, and then kept the money for himself. This seems like an answer to prayer at first for Sam because they threaten to kill Barbara if he doesn’t meet their needs or if he calls the police or the media. After saying no to their demands, and then immediately calling the police and the news, Sam realizes that they don’t want to kill her when they keep coming back with lower demands. Sandy tells Barbara that Sam refuses to pay even $10,000 for her safe return. Eventually the kidnappers and Barbara join together to try to take the unfaithful and unethical Sam for everything he’s worth!! 

RUTHLESS PEOPLE is one of my favorite comedies of the 1980’s. It has such a great cast. Danny DeVito and Bill Pullman are especially hilarious and have some of the film’s best lines. At the time the movie came out in 1986, DeVito was already established as a master of comedy, so Pullman’s performance as Earl, the dumbass Sonny Crockett wannabe, was the real revelation to me. Pullman made his film debut in RUTHLESS PEOPLE, and I never see him to this day that I don’t think of his character Earl’s excitement over the prospect of his newfound blackmail money:

“And then we’re off, to Haiti!”

“It’s Tahiti, you moron!”

One of the most interesting things about RUTHLESS PEOPLE is just how different it is from the directing trio’s (Zucker / Abrahams / Zucker) other popular films like THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE and AIRPLANE. Those films are based on non-stop visual and verbal gags. I love those films, but this is quite different. The comedy of RUTHLESS PEOPLE is based on the story itself, which is a comedy of confusion, coincidence, and character. I know it’s awesome because I still think of the film often. “Give the bag to bozo” and “a little poke in the whiskers” are phrases I’ll remember up to the point I go to my grave. 

Even though the film is almost 40 years old, if you’re looking for a laugh, I don’t think you can do much better than RUTHLESS PEOPLE. 

Spring Breakdown: Top Secret! (dir by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“How silly can you get?” Val Kilmer sings in the 1984 film Top Secret! and the answer would appear to be very silly.  Extremely silly.  Nonsensically silly.  Unbelievable silly.  So silly that it transcends all formerly known types of silliness.  In other words, this is a very silly film but that’s okay because it’s meant to be silly.

Some people, I know, would probably argue that Top Secret! doesn’t really qualify as a Spring Break film but I have to disagree.  Like any good Spring Break film, a good deal of Top Secret! takes place on the beach and Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, a singer who is obviously meant to be a parody of the type of singers who used to regularly appear in the beach party movies of the 60s.  Nick’s number one hit song is Skeet Surfin, which celebrates the sport of skeet shooting while on a surf board.  The movie opens with hundreds of handsome young men jumping on surf boards while holding rifles.  I honestly don’t know whether skeet surfing was every an actual sport but I certainly hope that it was because it looks like it would have been a lot of fun.  Certainly, it would perk up the Olympics.

Of course, Nick is not the only person in the film whose life is connected to the beach.  Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) spent much of her youth shipwrecked on a beach with Nigel (Christopher Villiers).  Unfortunately, one day, Nigel went out to sea to search for help and he never returned.  Hillary was eventually rescued.  That’s certainly a sadder trip to the beach than Nick’s but still, a beach is a beach.

Hillary and Nick’s paths cross when Nick is invited to perform at a cultural festival in what, in 1984, was known was East Germany.  Hillary is a member of the Resistance while her father, Dr. Paul Flammond (Michael Gough), is being held prisoner by the government and is being forced to design the type of secret weapons that are always at the heart of espionage adventures like this one.  When Nick and Hillary meet, it’s love at first sight.  Nick gets involved in the plan to save Hillary’s father and to thwart the insidious plans of the East German government.  He also finds the time to sing a lot of songs.

The plot of Top Secret! isn’t really easy to describe.  That’s largely because there really isn’t a plot in a conventional sense.  Instead, there’s just one joke after another.  The dialogue is purposefully nonsensical.  The visuals are full of odd details.  The jokes are frequently hilarious and, because they’re so fast and relentless, they’re also next to impossible to adequately describe.  Much of the visual humor simply has to be seen to be understood and appreciated.  For instance, it may sound slightly humorous to say that a scene features a stern-looking army officer answering a giant phone but you have to actually see the film to truly understand just how brilliantly Top Secret! pulls off the gag.

Of course, what really makes the film is work is Val Kilmer, who is young, handsome, and incredibly likable in the role of Nick.  Kilmer delivers every bizarre line with a straight face and an enthusiastic earnestness that makes him the perfect center for all the craziness raging around him.

How silly can you get?  Watch Top Secret! and find out!