1980 Airplane!

Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker (ZAZ) are a trio of creators who specialise in farcical, wacky comedy. In the 70's the three of them, having formed a friendship in high school, created The Kentucky Fried Theater which then went on to form The Kentucky Fried Movie. The success of that movie, and it's zany qualities, led to doors opening in Hollywood and to a movie that is the go-to for over the top silliness, Aiplane!

The plot is simple, and stolen from an actual B-Movie disaster where passengers on a plane have to fly the thing in when all the crew go sick. Yet this plot is second to the laughs, and there are plenty of them in its short running time of 87 minutes.

The cast are perfect. All taking it very seriously which only adds to the absurdity of it all. Surely you can't be serious, well I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. The movie also has great cameos from  some former Hollywood faces, led by Lloyd Bridges. We also have Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Ethel Merman and Leslie Nielsen, who's career was rejuvinated by his performance as the doctor. He went on to star in ZAZ's cop show Police Squad, which later became a movie itself, The Naked Gun.

The joy is all on screen; each viewing you discover a new joke that you missed through laughing at the previous one. It is the silliest movie I have ever seen.

On a budget of £3.5m it took a huge £83m in the States and $158m worldwide. It launched a sequel, which was not a ZAZ production and was not as successful, but does have a wonderful turn by William Shatner as a moonbase captain. The next ZAZ project was a silly World War 2 movie called Top Secret, which did not fare as well.

There are some immortal lines, and I leave you with favourite conversation between the captain of the plane and the doctor:

Doctor: How soon can we land?
Captain: I can't tell.
Doctor: You can tell me I'm a doctor.
Captain: No I mean I don't know.
Doctor: Can't you take a guess?
Captain: Well, not for another two hours.
Doctor: (pause) You can't take a guess for another two hours?

Triumph!