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

Posted on January 1, 2025 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!

Bruce Lee vs. The Star Whackers: Game of Death (1978, directed by Robert Clouse)

Posted on September 5, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

Billy Lo (played by archival footage of Bruce Lee and two stand-ins) is the world’s biggest film star and the Syndicate (represented by Dean Jagger and Hugh O’Brian) want a piece of the action. When Billy refuses to allow the Syndicate to take control of his career, the Syndicate responds by threatening both Billy and his girlfriend (Colleen Camp). After a Syndicate hitman sneaks onto the set of Billy’s latest film and shoots him in the face, Billy allows the world to believe that he’s dead. Using a variety of disguises, Billy seeks revenge on the Syndicate and all of its assassins, including the 7 foot tall Hakim (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).

Lee’s original plan for the Game of Death was that it would feature him as a retired martial artist who, in order to save the lives of his family, had to make his way up a five-level pagoda, defeating a different guardian on each floor. Each guardian would represent a different fighting style and the journey up the pagoda would allow Lee to discuss his beliefs regarding the principles of martial arts. Serving as both director and star, Lee did during the making of the film, of cerebral edema though some said Lee was either murdered or that he had faked his own death.

Released seven years after his death, the final version Game of Death has little in common with Lee’s original vision. Only about 11 minutes of footage from the original film was used in the revised version and most of Lee’s philosophical concerns were abandoned for a plot that, today, feels like it could have been lifted from Randy Quaid’s twitter timeline. (Also, when watching the film today, it’s also impossible to watch the Syndicate’s assassins disguise Billy Lo’s shooting as an on-set accident without being reminded of what would happen to Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow.) Game of Death opens with footage lifted from Lee’s battle with Chuck Norris at the end of Way of the Dragon and the other fight scenes are full of close-ups of Lee that were obviously lifted from other films. There’s even a scene in Billy’s dressing room where a cardboard cut-out of Lee’s face has obviously been taped onto a mirror. After Billy fakes his own death, footage of Bruce Lee’s actual funeral is shown, including a shot of Lee in his coffin.

If you can overlook the ethical issues of making a Bruce Lee film without the actual participation of Bruce Lee, Game of Death is actually a pretty entertaining movie. Director Robert Clouse had previously directed Enter the Dragon and obviously knew how to direct a fight scene while even stock footage of Bruce Lee has more charisma than the average action star. Best of all, Bruce Lee battles Kareem Adbul-Jabbar, in an epic scene that Lee himself directed for the original version of Game of Death. When the 7’2 Kareem Abdul Jabber plants his foot in the middle of Bruce Lee’s chest, Game of Death achieves pop cultural immortality.

Thorny ethical concerns aside, Game of Death proves that Bruce Lee will live forever.

Horror Film Review: The Visitor (dir by Giulio Paradisi)

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Do you want to see a strange horror film?

Just check out The Visitor, a 1979 Italian film that has recently been re-released by Drafthouse Films and occasionally shows up on TCM. In many ways, The Visitor is a total and complete mess. But, as is so often the case with Italian horror films, that very messiness — combined with some genuinely imaginative narrative and directorial choices — serves to make The Visitor into one of the most memorable films that you (possibly) have never heard of.

Like many of the Italian exploitation films released in the 70s and 80s, The Visitor is a rather blatant rip-off of a successful American film. What makes The Visitor unique is the amount of different movies that it rips off. The Visitor takes films that you would assume had no connection and mixes them together to create something wonderfully odd.

Franco Nero as Jesus in The Visitor

Much like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Visitor opens with the idea that intergalactic beings have been visiting Earth for centuries and are subtly influencing the development of humanity. The Visitor literally opens with Jesus Christ (played by Franco Nero!) sitting on a satellite and telling a version of the creation story to a bunch of bald children. He explains that, long ago, he battled an evil intergalactic demon known as Sateen. Sateen (who, the film implies, is better known on Earth as Satan) was eventually blown up but his genes were spread throughout humanity. The bald children surrounding him are the descendants of Sateen. Whenever one of them is born, Jesus sends an old man named Jerzy Colsowicz (played by director John Huston) to Earth so that Jerzy can bring the child to the satellite. Of course, whenever Jerzy isn’t kidnapping kids for Jesus, he spends his time hanging out in a psychedelic dimension.

Yes, you did read that correctly.

This is where Jerzy lives.

Once you get past the intergalactic part of the story, The Visitor is a pretty obvious rip-off of both The Omen and Damien: Omen II, with the main difference being that the demon child here is not a cherubic little boy but instead is a rather bratty 8 year-old little girl named Katy (Paige Collins). However, Katy is not the Antichrist. Instead, her job is to mate with a male child who also has Sateen’s genes and then her baby will be the Antichrist. In order to get this male child, Katy is pressuring her mother (Joanne Nail) to have sex with businessman Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen, who was also in Damien II: The Omen) so that Katy can have a half-brother to mate with. (Ewwwwwwww!) Raymond is a follower of Sateen and, adding to the film’s already odd feel, he also happens to own a basketball team.

(So, along with everything else going on, The Visitor also features a lot of basketball footage, which I guess would be exciting if I knew anything about basketball.)

Despite being a pretty powerful figure in the Sateenist hierarchy Raymond is not the head Sateenist. No, the head Sateenist is played by Mel Ferrer, an actor who was once married to Audrey Hepburn and who will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched an Italian horror film. (You can spot Ferrer in Zombie Holocaust, for example.) Ferrer and the other Sateenists are all old, distinguished looking white men who spend all of their time meeting in an ornate corporate boardroom.

So, Jerzy comes down to Earth to, with the help of a nanny played Shelley Winters, try to kidnap Katy but, for some reason, he doesn’t just do that. Instead, he spends most of his time just watching Katy do destructive things.

Much as in The Omen, anyone who gets too close to discovering the truth about Katy ends up dying an elaborate and bloody way. Often times, their death involves black crows, who the film suggests might actually be all of those little bald kids in animal disguise. So is Jesus sending those crows to kill people? Seriously, this movie is weird.

Beware the Crows

Meanwhile, Katy’s mom is having doubts about both Raymond and her daughter. She even goes and talks to her ex-husband, an abortionist who is played by yet another film director, in this case Sam Peckinpah. Katy gets annoyed with her mom and, after happening to come across a gun hidden away inside of a birthday presents, shoots her in the back and leaves her paralyzed.

And did I mention that Katy is telekinetic, much like Carrie? That’s right! During my favorite scene, Katy goes skating at the local mall’s ice rink and, after a group of boys bully her, she uses her powers to send those bullies flying all over the mall. Oddly enough, nobody seems to notice this chaos. Except, of course, for Jerzy who just stands off in the corner and watches without doing anything…

Seriously, I love The Visitor. Along with being surprisingly well-acted and visually inventive, the film is just so weird! In many ways, it epitomizes everything that I love about the old Italian exploitation films. While it is rather shameless about ripping off other movies, the film still brings its own unique spin to everything.

Normally, I’d say that The Visitor is a good film for Halloween but you know what? Anytime is a good time for an Italian horror film!