3. The Naked Gun 4 1/4
The minds behind Airplane and Top Secret took a short-lived television series called Police Squad and turned it into a successful film franchise beginning with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad. The films starred Leslie Nielsen as Detective Frank Drebin, an inept cop who bumbles his way to solving crimes. An American Jacques Clouseau, if you will. The rapid-fire gags that audiences responded to so well in Airplane were alive and well in The Naked Gun. Two sequels later, The Naked Gun franchise, while successful, seemed all but done. In 2010 Leslie Nielsen told the BBC that a fourth Naked Gun was in the works, but that he was not involved. The script treatment for the straight to DVD project was reportedly so funny that Paramount was looking to take it to the big screen instead. While the fourth film was subsequently scrapped, it goes without saying that a reunion film by Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker would be welcomed by audiences. Their brand of wacky one liners and slapstick storytelling still works if it's well done. But with Nielsen now dead, its hard to imagine a Naked Gun without him. However, the brain trust behind the first three Naked Gun films are still active in the industry, so who knows?