Airplane!

In the summer of 1980, a trio of unknown filmmakers from Wisconsin unleashed something completely unexpected on audiences. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, who had honed their rapid-fire joke style with the stage show Kentucky Fried Theater, turned their attention to the disaster movie genre. The result was a film that didn't just parody Zero Hour! and the Airport series, it dismantled them with a machine-gun barrage of puns, sight gags, and deadpan absurdity that left audiences gasping for breath.

The $3.5 million production, shot mostly in a converted steel plant in Fontana, California, became the highest-grossing comedy of 1980 in the United States, pulling in over $83 million domestically. It also completely reinvented the career of Leslie Nielsen, who had spent decades playing straight dramatic roles before his perfectly serious turn as Dr. Rumack revealed a comic genius nobody knew he had. Nielsen's delivery of lines like "I am serious... and don't call me Shirley" would become legendary.

More than four decades later, Airplane! remains a touchstone of American comedy. Its influence can be seen everywhere from The Simpsons to the Scary Movie franchise, and its jokes have entered the cultural lexicon so deeply that many people use phrases like "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue" without knowing where they came from.[edit]

Former fighter pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) is a mess. Traumatized by a wartime incident where he froze during a critical mission, causing the loss of his entire squadron, he now drives a taxi and drowns his anxieties in alcohol. His girlfriend Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty), a flight attendant, has had enough. She walks out on him, and Striker, desperate to win her back, buys a ticket on the same Trans American flight she is working, Flight 209 from Los Angeles to Chicago.

The plane is a zoo. The passengers include a nun who keeps nervously clutching her rosary, a young girl with a mysterious illness, two elderly women who converse exclusively in jive, and a guitar-strumming nun. In the cockpit, Captain Clarence Oveur (Peter Graves) displays a bizarre interest in young boys, while First Officer Roger Murdock (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, playing himself) is constantly mistaken for the basketball star. On the ground, air traffic controller Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges) is a bundle of nerves who keeps picking the wrong week to quit various addictions.

Mid-flight, the entire crew and most passengers eat the fish for dinner. Within minutes, they are struck down by severe food poisoning, leaving them incapacitated. With no one capable of flying the plane, the ground team, McCroskey and the legendary Captain Rex Kramer (Robert Stack), must guide Striker, the only person on board with any flying experience, into the cockpit. The problem is that Striker's PTSD makes him freeze up every time he tries to take control.

As the plane hurtles toward Chicago with a failing autopilot and a malfunctioning landing gear, Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) tries to keep Striker calm while Elaine works to reignite their romance. The situation grows increasingly absurd: a passenger is inflated as an emergency slide, a nun breakdances to save the day, and the autopilot turns out to be a large inflatable dummy named Otto. Every attempt to land is met with a new obstacle, from a runway that doubles as a highway to a marching band that appears out of nowhere.[edit]