Airplane!

I am a huge fan of the TCM Big Screen Classics movie series and I was particularly excited about the selections slated for this year.  Many of the screenings had to be canceled because of Covid-19 but I am happy to report that a lot of them have been rescheduled now that movie theaters are opening up again so I was able to see Airplane! last night!  I remember watching this hilarious spoof of disaster movies on my little black and white TV late at night when I was in high school but it was so much more fun to see it on the big screen.  On a flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, which is carrying a little girl (Jill Whelan) who needs a heart transplant, the pilot Captain Oveur (Peter Graves), the Co-Pilot Roger Murdock (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the Navigator Victor Basta (Frank Ashmore), and several of the passengers all become incapacitated with food poisoning.  It is all up to Ted Striker (Robert Hays), a pilot suffering from PTSD after the war, to save them with the help Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty), a stewardess who is trying to break up with Striker, Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nelson), an unflappable physician on board, Steve McCroskey (Lloyd Bridges), a hard-boiled air traffic control supervisor, and Captain Rex Kramer (Robert Stack), a pilot who flew with Striker in the war.  This movie is filled with slapstick comedy (slapstick comedy is based on physical humor such as pratfalls and mild violence but that isn't important right now), off-color jokes, and naughty sexual innuendos and, even though contemporary audiences might find some of it offensive, I laughed out loud multiple times and I was not alone!  I started laughing during a reference to Jaws in the opening scene and didn't stop until the end-credits scene where a man is still waiting in a cab driven by Striker at the beginning of the movie.  Almost everyone was laughing and quoting their favorite lines ("What's the vector, Victor?") as they walked out of the theater so it was definitely a lot of fun!  Unfortunately, last night was the final screening of Airplane! but there are lots of great movies in the series coming soon to a theater near you (go here for more information).  I am especially looking forward to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Psycho, and The Shining.