No list of running gags would be complete without mention of the seminal spoof comedy, Airplane! A relentless onslaught of silly puns, sight gags and slapstick humour, practically every line is a callback to a previous joke. As a result, it's almost impossible to pick a favourite. How about Ted Striker's "drinking problem," in which he throws a glass of water over his face? Or tower supervisor Steve McCroskey's catalogue of vices (''Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue'')? Or, in what is the perhaps the most iconic of the lot, the deadpan delivery of Dr. Rumack?
Rumack: "Can you fly this plane, and land it?" Ted Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." Rumack: "I am serious...and don't call me Shirley."
However, it is Captain Oveur's increasingly inappropriate questions to Joey, a young passenger who has asked to visit the cockpit, that raise the biggest smile - not to mention a few eyebrows. At first their encounter seems innocent enough, with the jovial Oveur (Peter Graves) asking Joey if he has ever been in a cockpit before. But then the pilot's line of questioning goes from the curious (''Do you like gladiator movies, Joey?'') to the downright creepy (''Have you ever seen a grown man naked?''), all delivered with an avuncular smile or a playful hand on the boy's shoulder. We never find out Joey's responses; the scene prefers to leave such hilarious yet horribly awkward non sequiturs up in the air (as it were). But it's staggering to think that all this - as well as swearing, jokes about oral sex, suicide and a (deliberately) gratuitous shot of topless woman- ever made it into a PG film.
Yorkshireman (hence the surname). Often spotted sacrificing sleep and sanity for the annual Leeds International Film Festival. For a sample of (fairly) recent film reviews, please visit whatsnottoblog.wordpress.com.
