{"id":677,"date":"2007-07-10T23:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-11T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=677"},"modified":"2018-11-18T22:55:01","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T03:55:01","slug":"airplane-vs-zero-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2007\/07\/10\/airplane-vs-zero-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"AIRPLANE! vs ZERO HOUR!"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my all time favorite movies is the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker disaster spoof Airplane!<\/strong>. If you by chance haven’t seen the film, there’s no real way to describe the film’s offbeat, random, out-of-left field sense of humor. It’s something you’ll just have to experience for yourself.<\/p>\n

I first saw the movie sometime in the early 1980s, at my friend’s house on HBO. It was a comic revelation to us and for months afterwards we would set each other up with lines like “Surely you don’t mean it,” and getting the expected “Yes I do. And don’t call me Shirley!” in response.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until around the time I was in high school or college that I learned that the movie was actually patterened after a 1957 b-movie called Zero Hour!<\/strong>, scripted by none other than Alex Roots<\/em> Hailey! Finding it on television proved impossible and it never got a release on VHS.<\/p>\n

Last week though, Zero Hour! finally got a home video release as part of Warner Brothers “Cult Camp Classics” series. And the similarities between Zero Hour!<\/strong> and Airplane!<\/strong> are amazing! Where the original film reached for dramatic tension, Airplane!<\/strong> grabs laughs using the exact same lines. The Zucker-Abrams-Zucker team knew that the original was pure soapy melodrama, and they played it as straight as possible, knowing that’s where the laughs were.<\/p>\n

Don’t take my word for it though. Check out these two scene-by-scene comparisons that recently showed up on YouTube.<\/p>\n

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One of my all time favorite movies is the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker disaster spoof Airplane!. If you by chance haven’t seen the film, there’s no real way to describe the film’s offbeat, random, out-of-left field sense of [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[1717,83,87,88,7860],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"tag-airplane","8":"tag-classic-films","9":"tag-cult-films","10":"tag-dvds","11":"tag-trivia"},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t