Late Night 11:00pm Screening of AIRPLANE at The Skyview Drive-in in Belleville, IL September 24th

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!”

There will be a 11:00pm Screening of AIRPLANE at the Skyview Drive in Belleville (5700 N Belt W, Belleville, IL 62226) , Thursday September 24th at 11pm. The gate opens at 10:30. Admission is $10. . The Skyview’s site is HERE

AIRPLANE (1980) could have derailed the careers of everyone involved. For example, people under 40 may not even know that until this movie, Leslie Nielsen was strictly a serious actor in dramas both on TV and in film. Many may watch 1973’s THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE for the first time today and keep waiting for Leslie Nielson – as the captain of the doomed ship – to get up from the dining room table wearing just his heart-covered underwear below the waist, or for him to make that first clueless remark. He never does. But from AIRPLANE onward, he was strictly a comic actor and a good one. Quite a sharp turn for age 55.

To the uninitiated, AIRPLANE was actually a shot-by-shot remake/parody of the 50’s disaster movie ZERO HOUR! (with Dana Andrews as the original Ted Stryker!) ZAZ (writer/directors Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker) bought the script and basically remade the film, only giving it a comedic twist. AIRPLANE! made fun of the clichés, stock characters, and silly subplots of the other 70’s disaster movies, not just ZERO HOUR but also other movies like AIRPORT 1975 (the infamous nun scene). A shot-by-shot spoof rarely works, but AIRPLANE! did the job perfectly. But whether or not you’ve seen any of the movies it parodies, AIRPLANE! has a lot jokes and sight gags that work in spite of itself. Surely you don’t need to see any of the movies to find the “Surely, you can’t be serious” scene. This is probably why AIRPLANE! is widely revered as one of the best comedies ever. Forget the fact that this movies would spawn imitators like EPIC MOVIE and DISASTER MOVIE, AIRPLANE! is movie parodies done right.