"Actor: Jim Abrahams"

• Airplane! | DVD | (05/03/2001) from £5.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (166.94%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The quintessential movie spoof that spawned an entire genre of parody films, the original Airplane! still holds up as one of the brightest comedic gems of the 1980s, not to mention of cinema itself (it often tops polls of the funniest movies ever made). The humour may be low and obvious at times, but the jokes keep coming at a rapid-fire clip and its targets--primarily the lesser lights of 1970s cinema, from disco films to star-studded disaster epics--are more than worthy for send-up. If you've seen even one of the overblown Airport movies then you know the plot: the crew of a filled-to-capacity jetliner is wiped out and it's up to a plucky stewardess and a shell-shocked fighter pilot to land the plane. Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty are the heroes who have a history that includes a meet-cute á la Saturday Night Fever, a surf scene right out of From Here to Eternity, a Peace Corps trip to Africa to teach the natives the benefits of Tupperware and basketball, a war-ravaged recovery room with a G.I. who thinks he's Ethel Merman (a hilarious cameo)--and those are just the flashbacks! The jokes gleefully skirt the boundaries of bad taste (pilot Peter Graves to a juvenile cockpit visitor: "Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"), with the high (low?) point being Hagerty's intimate involvement with the blow-up automatic pilot doll, but they'll have you rolling on the floor. The film launched the careers of collaborators Jim Abrahams (Big Business), David Zucker (Ruthless People) and Jerry Zucker (Ghost), as well as revitalising such B-movie actors as Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen, who built a second career on films like this. A vital part of any home film collection. --Mark Englehart, Amazon.com

• Kentucky Fried Movie | DVD | (22/03/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Twenty years before the Farrelly Brothers turned raunch into acceptable film comedy, the team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker exploited it first. The college threesome made it big with Airplane in 1980, but this 1977 cinematic version of their live theatre show was the ground zero for their talents. Kentucky Fried Movie is a mish-mash of sketches, fake commercials, and parodies with no central theme--except their crudeness and laugh-out-loud humour. Highlights include a commercial for "Scot Free", a board game based on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy; "The Wonderful World of Sex", in which a couple goes through foreplay with a self-help narrator instructing them step-by-step; and a 20-minute spoof of Bruce Lee films entitled "A Fistful of Yen". Brazen to a fault, the movie will reach for any punchline, no matter how crude (and those who flocked to the film's initial release looking for R-rated sex will remember the final sketch and the infamous trailer for "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble".) Directed by then-unknown John Landis (who went on to make The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London) on a shoestring budget, the film has aged. But crassness, when this funny, is forever. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

• Top Secret | DVD | (04/11/2002) from £7.05   |  Saving you £5.94 (84.26%)   |  RRP £12.99

  In between the disaster movie satire Airplane! in 1980 and the hardboiled cop show parody The Naked Gun in 1988, the comedy crew of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker put together a picture that's almost as funny as their better-known hits. Top Secret! sends up spy movies and cheesy teen rock 'n' roll musicals. Val Kilmer stars as swivel-hipped American rocker Nick Rivers, a sort of blonde Elvis whose secret weapon is Little Richard's tune "Tutti Fruitti." On tour behind the Iron Curtain, Nick strikes blows for democracy overtly and covertly, with his music as well as his espionage skills. In short, this is a very, very silly motion picture. Some great gags, including a subtitled scene in a Swedish book shop, and an inspired bit with a Ford Pinto that not everybody may get anymore. (The Pinto, you may or may not recall, was notoriously prone to gas tank explosions when rear-ended.) --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

• Airplane! / Airplane 2 - The Sequel | DVD | (02/12/2002) from £16.03   |  Saving you £3.96 (24.70%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Airplane! (1980): Voted one of the 10 funniest movies ever made by the American Film Institute Airplane! is a masterpiece of off-the-wall comedy. Featuring Robert Hays as an ex-fighter pilot forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the flight crew succumbs to food poisoning; Julie Hagerty as his girlfriend/ stewardess/ co-pilot; and a cast of all-stars including Robert Stack Lloyd Bridges Peter Graves Leslie Nielsen Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and more! Their hilarious high jinks spook airplane disaster flicks religious zealots television commercials romantic love...the list whirls by in rapid succession. And the story races from one moment of zany fun to the next! Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982): There's a mad bomber on board the first lunar shuttle is about to self-destruct the engines are not working and worse of all - the flight crew discovers they are completely out of coffee! It's the high-flying lunacy of 'Airplane!' all over again as Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty fly totally out of ozone to recreate their hilarious original roles. The crew of crazies includes Peter Graves Lloyd Bridges William Shatner Chad Everett Sonny Bono Raymond Burr and many others. Can Hays save the day again - without caffeine? Fasten your seatbelts for a ride you'll never forget - 'Airplane 2: The Sequel'.