The only thing remotely resembling Airplane! going in 1980 were Carol Burnett's 'old movie' spoofs on her television show. Perhaps the real progenitor is a Universal film that hasn't been seen much in over 60 years, 1940's Hellzapoppin by the Broadway comedy team of Olsen and Johnson. Descriptions make it sound like it used the general Mad magazine style. The gargantuan comedy spectacular 1941 had some big laughs but was just too massive and labored to be consistently enjoyable. The Big Bus had a wild sense of humor, but audiences thought the gag was a little too drawn out. The Zuckers and Abrahams had been zeroing in on this particular comedy target for several years, and concentrated not on colossal action setpieces, but on what really makes people laugh. Nowadays a funny writer-directing team might find receptive studio ears by pitching their proposed comedy as, you know, like Airplane! But Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams of Kentucky Fried Theater fame spent years steering their concept through a series of rejections. Nobody "got it."

In-flight disaster movies are some of the most unintentionally hilarious films going. The premise that a plane is in trouble invariably leads to a lot of embarrassing scene chewing, spiritual conversion and manic behavior. The High and the Mighty is barely rescued from idiocy by a fine John Wayne performance and a great music score, but a number of cheaper follow-up pictures (Fate is the Hunter) amped up the melodrama and came off as major embarrassments. The Zuckers caught Zero Hour on the Late Show and were struck by how idiotically it now played, as if it had been planned as a comedy. Audiences think that Airplane! is taking off on the then-popular Airport series of increasingly awful in-flight jeopardy pictures, but it's apparently modeled closely on Zero Hour, right down to setups and dialogue lines.

So the beauty of Airplane! is that it's not throwaway humor with actors doing whatever they want. Bridges and Robert Stack (the princes of countless dramas requiring deadpan intensity and terse line readings) keep straight faces despite the provocations of control-tower queen Steven Stucker's Johnny Hinshaw. Peter Graves gives every absurd dialogue line his patented 100% sincerity sales push, even if he appears to be hitting on a nine-year old boy. Best of all is Leslie Nielsen's doctor Rumack. Dramatic actor Nielsen was cheerfully unexceptional in just about everything he did (Forbidden Planet, The Opposite Sex ... see his screen test for Ben-Hur sometime ...) even though he was obviously a borderline nut in person. He eventually found his place as mostly colorless television baddies, making the stars look good. As if built for comedy parody, Nielsen's sense of timing and finesse with ridiculous material turned out to be the beginning of a glorious career. These guys instinctively knew what the Zuckers and Abrahams had in mind, or at least most of them did. As reported in the extras on this "Don't Call Me Shirley!" edition, when Bridges asked Stack if a joke was going to work, Stack said, "Lloyd, we are the joke."

With this background, all that Julie Hagerty and Robert Hays have to do is be sincere and underreact to the provocations of 1001 absurd jokes, gags, breakaway sets, water dump tanks and disco fever nonsense. But they're charming in their own right - we like their personalities and accept them, even though they're as silly as everyone else is. Airplane! doesn't have anybody normal for the audience to identify with, forcing us into the Zuckers and Abraham's crazy world.

Paramount's Don't Call Me Shirley! edition of one of the funniest films ever made, Airplane! is a very good if not fabulous transfer. It's sharp and colorful but is dirtier than one would expect, and not just in the frequent optical sections. The audio is in 5.1 or 2.0 (with a French mono) but I don't know if the stereo tracks are remixed or simply reprocessed.

The extras are a comedy bonanza in their own right, although accessibility to most of the goodies requires watching the entire movie again. The Zuckers, Abrahams, and producer Jon Davison provide an amusing commentary that duplicates a lot of information contained in the disc's playful trivia track. Balloons pop up to identify extras or point out tell-tale wires and crewmen lurking around the periphery of shots, and also add some jokes of their own.

There's no making-of docu consisting of film clips wrapped around actors or other creatives explaining how this or that happened, or how a gag came about. Instead, a "Long Haul Version" forces one to watch the film all over again, with frequent programmed "seamless branches" that interrupt for input by the Zuckers, Abrahams, Davison, the special effects man and actors Hay, Nielsen, Graves (who claims innocence in regard to the 'bad taste' in the script), Lorna Patterson, Lee Bryant, Norman Alexander Gibbs, Nicholas Pryor, Rossie Harris and Al White.

A couple of good deleted scenes are presented in the "Long Haul" and the enthusiastic interviewees offer dozens of worthy anecdotes, with the memories of Nielsen and Graves coming off the best. They also fondly mention actors not present -- Julie Hagerty, Maureen McGovern, and many who have since passed away. The most startling revelation is in the "shit hit the fan" gag: The first attempt with an air mortar full of bean dip missed and hit actor Stephen Stucker square in the chest ... and he reportedly freaked out.

The "Long Haul Version" also has a few clips from Hall Bartlett's Zero Hour that make us desperately want to see that movie --- Airplane! is really a comic remake. Airplane!'s success in 1980 surely (Shirley?) put the Airport series out of business, an unsung service that deserved a special Oscar.

The original Trailer is also included.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Airplane! rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Very Good +
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Commentary, Trivia Track, Trailer, "Long Haul" extended version with deleted scenes and interview bites
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: December 3, 2005