Jeremy’s Tophunder №83: Airplane!

8 min readJun 20, 2020

In terms of pure, raw funny, I don’t think there’s ever been a movie that can make me laugh quite like Airplane! can. It’s the ultimate parody, perfectly encapsulating all the familiar beats from a generic disaster movie.

It’s the small melodramatic moments that really sell it for me. The movie makes almost zero effort to sell the broken relationship between the two main characters (former pilot and reluctant hero Ted Striker, played by Robert Hays, and flight attendant Elaine, played by Julie Hagerty), but that really only serves to make their interactions all the more funny. I had probably seen the movie 10 or 12 times before I realized that the whole dynamic between the two characters (and really, the entire plot of the entire movie) is a direct rip-off of a 1957 thriller called “Zero Hour.”

I’ve never actually gotten around to watching Zero Hour, but all of my research suggests that not only are substantial portions of the dialogue copied verbatim, but some scenes even serve as shot-for-shot remakes of the original.

As the story goes, writers and directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker would record late-night TV in the 1970s in search of comedy material in commercials and advertisements. In the process of doing this, the ended up recording an airing of Zero Hour, which they decided was a perfect opportunity for spoof and parody, as they found it to be a “perfectly classically structured film.” But as they wrote the script, they realized that they didn’t know enough how to structure feature-length scripts, so they just lifted the entire template of Zero Hour, and threw in jokes whenever they felt needed. The final script was so close to the original that they actually had to purchase the rights to Zero Hour to avoid any potential legal entanglements.

Below, I’ve copied and pasted plot summaries from each movie, lifted directly from their Wikipedia pages. See if you can figure out which one is a thriller from the 50s that nobody ever thinks about, and which one is from one of the greatest comedy films of all time. The only things I’ve changed character names and other random insignificant details.

During the closing days of the war, six members of an Air Force fighter squadron are killed because of a command decision made by pilot Ted Striker. Years later, in civilian life, a guilt-stricken Striker goes through many jobs, and his marriage is in trouble.
Striker finds a note at home: his wife Elaine has taken their young son Joey and is leaving him. He rushes to the airport to board the same flight. He asks his wife for one last chance, but Elaine says that she can no longer love a man she does not respect.
The routine flight becomes deadly when the flight crew begins the meal service. Meat or fish are the options. When a number of passengers begin feeling sick, a doctor aboard determines that there must have been something wrong with the fish.
While attending to others, the flight crew and doctor discover that both the pilot and co-pilot have also become seriously ill. Although it stays in the air on autopilot, no one is left to fly the plane. After a flight attendant checks with other passengers, she determines that Striker is the only one with flying experience, but he has not flown in 10 years and has no familiarity with aircraft of this size. Owing to dense fog on the ground obscuring the runway, the flight must bypass all other intermediate airports, to continue on to their destination.
Striker’s superior in the war, the tough-minded Captain Kramer, is summoned to the airport to give him instructions about how to land the aircraft. Elaine joins her husband in the cockpit to handle the radio. Ordered to remain airborne, Striker makes a command decision to land the airliner because passengers will die if they do not get to a hospital soon.
Striker lands the plane, saving all of the passengers and earning the respect of Elaine and Captain Kramer.

Okay, that’s one. Here’s the other:

Ex-fighter pilot Ted Striker is a traumatized war veteran turned taxi driver. Because of his pathological fear of flying and drinking problem, he has been unable to hold a responsible job. Elaine leaves him, boarding a flight. Ted abandons his taxi and buys a ticket on the same flight to try to win her back. However, she still continues to reject him during the flight.
After the in-flight meal is served, several of the passengers and the flight crew fall ill, including the Captain. A doctor aboard discovers one of the offered courses caused food poisoning. With the flight crew incapacitated, Elaine contacts the control tower for help, and is instructed by the tower supervisor to activate the plane’s autopilot, which will get them to their destination, but will not be able to land the plane. Elaine and the doctor convince Ted to take the controls. When the tower supervisor learns that Ted is piloting, he contacts Ted’s former commanding officer, Rex Kramer, now serving as a commercial pilot, so that he can help talk Ted through landing the plane. Ted becomes troubled when Rex starts giving instructions, and briefly stresses out from flashbacks to the war. Both Elaine and the doctor bolster Ted’s confidence and he takes the controls under Kramer’s guidance.
As the plane nears its destination, the weather becomes harsh, making landing difficult. With Elaine’s help as co-pilot and Kramer’s guidance, Ted is able to land the plane safely with the passengers suffering only minor injuries, despite the landing gear being sheared off. Rescue vehicles arrive to help unload the plane. Impressed by Ted’s display of courage, Elaine embraces and kisses him, rekindling their relationship.

Like, seriously? It’s literally the same movie. Except one is hysterically funny.

Airplane is one of the most delightfully quotable movies ever, featuring some of the most underratedly hilarious characters in movie history. Everyone obviously remembers Leslie Nielsen as the doctor, and most of his best lines, but my favorite characters are actually the guys in the control tower — Lloyd Bridges as McCroskey, Robert Stack as Kramer, and Stephen Stucker as Johnny. Some of my favorite moments include Kramer’s two pairs of sunglasses, McCroskey posing at his desk in front of a framed photo of McCroskey posing at his desk, and of course, literally every line out of Johnny’s mouth.

From start to finish, it’s just a beautifully absurd movie with so many stupid scenes that make me laugh, like the captain of the plane browsing nude magazines before taking an important phone call from the Mayo Clinic, or a shot of a nun reading Boys’ Life magazine, followed by a shot of a boy reading “Nuns’ Life” magazine. The automatic pilot for the plane is just an inflatable doll, appropriately named “Otto,” and he even gets a little lucky in one scene.

The most brilliant part of the movie is one that is probably lost on people like me who weren’t alive when the movie was released. The first time I saw Airplane, I obviously laughed my ass off, but what I didn’t realize is that the cast is almost exclusively non-comedic actors. They cast the movie as if they were just re-making Zero Hour. They filled each role with an actor known for dramatic work, like Stack and Bridges and Peter Graves. Even Leslie Nielsen had barely appeared in comedic roles. Imagine if the funniest movie of 2020 was an ensemble cast of character actors like J.K. Simmons and Paul Giamatti and Walton Goggins and Tilda Swinton and Patricia Clarkson. It would be weird, right? That’s what Airplane was in 1980. It’s a little bit like Jeff Daniels crushing his performance in Dumb & Dumber or Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, but the entire cast.

Airplane isn’t my favorite comedy movie, but it might be the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. I’d say it doesn’t quite hold up as well 40 years later (the style of modern comedies is so different that watching it now is a bit jarring), but every time I watch it, I’m remember what it was like to see it for the first time when I was 12 or however old I was. I just giggle like an idiot. I dropped it down so far on the list because it’s very much a product of its time, and while it’s still funny now, it doesn’t hit me the same way that my higher-ranked comedies (The Other Guys, Dodgeball) do. But it’s one of the few movies that I’ve considered my favorite comedy at certain points of my life, so there was never any questions as to whether or not it would make the list.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

5. The Shawshank Redemption

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Departed

9. Saving Private Ryan

10. Inglourious Basterds

11. The Big Short