Doris Belack | Through the Shattered Lens

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.

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981. The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, The American Short Story adapts a short story by Katherine Anne Porter.

Episode #16 “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”

(Dir by Randa Haines, originally aired 1980)

Granny Weatherall (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is dying. While the doctor tries to comfort her and the priest tries to provide salvation, Granny obsesses on cleaning her house and getting everything in its proper place. She thinks about how her adult daughter, Cornelia (Lois Smith), is incapable of keeping the house as clean as Granny Weatherall believes it should be. Memories of the past and hallucinations of the present flood her mind and she remembers the time that she was jilted by a suitor and she thinks about how she has to live long enough to destroy the letters that he once wrote her. But the coldness of death is always hovering in the background….

This episode moved a bit slowly but it was effective due to the performance of Geraldine Fitzgerald and also Randa Haines’s direction, which kept the viewer unsure of whether they were seeing reality or if they were just seeing Granny Weatherall’s dying thoughts. The short story itself is written as a stream-of-consciousness and Haines does her best to capture that feeling in her adaptation. One of the main problems with The American Short Story has been that most of the adaptations have struggled to capture the tone of the original stories. The Jilting of Granny Weatherall’s visuals come very close to recreating the power of Katherine Anne Porter’s words.

Next week, The American Short Story wraps up with an adaptation of a James Thurber short story.