“Airplane” was pretty much a line for line spoof of the movie “Zero Hour”

[srick]

I spent most of the morning paying end of year bills, end of year organizing, etc. I needed something, strong, something powerful, to lift the fog from my brain. This happened to be the medicine that I needed... I had heard the rumors and they were all true.

Submitted, for your listening and watching pleasure:

[El Conquistador]

I enjoyed that. Thanks!

Steve

[Wadcutter]

Good one, thanks for posting that.

[Monsoon1]

I'll check this one out later, thanks.

[Ozzy the dog]

Originally Posted by srick

“Airplane” was pretty much a line for line spoof of the movie “Zero Hour”

Surely you can't be serious!

Never seen Zero Hour but Airplane was great.

[mr. beaumont]

Well, that absolutely made my day. Never knew.

[FrankHudson]

Neither movie is a funny as Airplane, but does everyone know that the Death Star bomb run attack in the original Star Wars movie was a near shot by shot tribute to the British WWII move "The Dam Busters?"

[guitar george]

That was great! I enjoyed watching the 1980 movie a few times. They took the comedy right to the very end in that version.

At the start of the movie, Ted Striker is a taxi driver and a male passenger jumps in the back seat of his taxi just as Ted jumps out and says, "I'll be back in a minute." He's off to pursue his estranged girlfriend, Elaine. The whole movie then carries on in the doomed airplane covering a period of many hours. Right at the end, after the end credits, the passenger is still sitting in the taxi, in the middle of the night waiting for Ted to return, and he looks at his watch and says "I'll give him another 20 minutes, but, that's it."

I've chuckled at those scenes over the years and even to this day I sometimes say "I'll give him another 20 minutes, but, that's it." when someone is unduly late. People laugh when I say that.

[Muddslide]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Neither movie is a funny as Airplane, but does everyone know that the Death Star bomb run attack in the original Star Wars movie was a near shot by shot tribute to the British WWII move "The Dam Busters?"

Star Wars, broadly speaking, was an outer space knockoff of some Akura Kurosawa samurai films of the 50s and 60s, including Sanjuro and Yojimbo.

I've heard that after writing the first draft, Lucas realized it was a little to much of a direct lift to be comfortably close, so he made revisions and introduced new characters and sub-plots, including Han and Chewy.