On TCM Airplane!/Zero Hour!, the film Airplane Parodies

[BERIGAN]

I remember a few months before my Mom died, her knocking on the wall(she was bedridden at the time) and I came in to see what she wanted. She was so tickled because Zero Hour was on, and she told me how it appeared Airplane had stolen so much of the plot for Airplane. I had always assumed Airplane just was a parody of the Airport movies, but clearly this film was the main inspiration. The Crew gets sick, a man has to fly that has given it up...we caught it late, but laughed at what we saw.

And if you haven't seen Airplane, it's only one of the best comedies eva!

10:00pm [Comedy] Airplane! (1980)

When a flight crew falls ill, the only man who can land the plane is afraid of flying.

Cast: Robert Hays, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Julie Hagerty Dir: Jerry Zucker C-88 mins, TV-MA [Letterbox] [Close Captioned] [Email Remind Me]

11:45pm [suspense/Mystery] Zero Hour! (1957)

When a flight crew falls ill, the only man who can land the plane is afraid of flying.

Cast: Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Sterling Hayden, Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch Dir: Hall Bartlett BW-81 mins, TV-PG

[BFrank]

I've seen "Airplane!" about 100 times (well, maybe not THAT many times), never seen "Zero Hour". Have to check that out.

Thanks for the heads up!

[BFrank]

That was freaking AMAAAAAAAAZING. I had no idea they used that movie. In fact, quite a bit of the script and visuals are taken directly from Zero Hour. It's more than an inspiration, it IS "Airplane!".

[BERIGAN]

That was freaking AMAAAAAAAAZING. I had no idea they used that movie. In fact, quite a bit of the script and visuals are taken directly from Zero Hour. It's more than an inspiration, it IS "Airplane!".

Isn't that crazy???? I must have just seen a fraction of the film, I really didn't remember much of it at all.

So many things that only nuts that have seen Airplane many times might notice.

The boy is Joey in both films(But Striker's son in Zero Hour!), the guy on the phone saying he's a menace to everything in the air...was waiting for him to say, yes....birds too! Even the guy in the Lloyd Bridges roll said, looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking! Fantastic!

Abrahams and the Zucker brothers must have watched Zero Hour! a few dozen times while high, and just imagined what the characters might have said.

And you know what??? It's not a bad little film...better than the much bigger budgeted The Crowded Sky(1960) that ran before Airplane!

Edited March 6, 2010 by BERIGAN

[Dan Gould]

I remember reading or seeing somewhere that there was another, direct inspiration on Abrams/Zucker than the Airport movies, but there was no way I was staying up that late to see this film. But I mentioned it to my wife and we were wondering whether there would be a Lloyd Bridges character saying "looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking." Pretty funny, maybe they'll run it again at an hour that I might keep my eyes open.

[BFrank]

Actually, it's the Robert Stack character (Sterling Hayden!) who says "Guess I picked the wrong week to quit smoking". But it's there ...

There's even a bit with the hysterical female passenger where two people take turns trying to shake her out of it (although in Airplane it's an aisle-full of people).

[medjuck]

Zero Hour was originally a CBC drama called Flight Into Danger. It was written by Arthur Haley who was then living in Canada. IIRC The show was so popular it was shown twice (maybe even performed twice- this was before the days of taping.) It was then done in the US on IIRC the Kraft Suspense show. Haley went on to become a popular novelist. He wrote Airport, the novel on which the film is based.

[Ted O'Reilly]

Zero Hour was originally a CBC drama called Flight Into Danger. It was written by Arthur Haley who was then living in Canada. IIRC The show was so popular it was shown twice (maybe even performed twice- this was before the days of taping.) It was then done in the US on IIRC the Kraft Suspense show. Haley went on to become a popular novelist. He wrote Airport, the novel on which the film is based.

I'm old enough to remember having watched "Flight Into Danger". It was adapted by Haley from his novel "Runway Zero-Eight". I thind the TV show was Haley's first real success. For all you Trekkies, note that the star was James Doohan. Yup, engineer Scottie from Star Trek. (He was a Canadian, you know -- not a Scot, and was in fact a licensed pilot).

From a Queens University website on media:

The most auspicious and successful first work to air on General Motors Theatre, however, was Flight Into Danger, Arthur Hailey's story of a passenger flight whose crew was crippled with food poisoning and the plane that had to be guided to the ground by a former air force fighter pilot and a flight attendant. Produced in 1956 by David Greene and starring James Doohan and Corinne Conley, Flight Into Danger became a national success and was sold to U.S. and British television (and was later adapted into a feature film) to become and international hit.

[Dave James]

I watched Airplane again last night. What's great about that movie is that even though I've seen it maybe 20 times, I still see things I never noticed before. I hate to admit it, but last night was the first time I saw all the mayonnaise jars on the shelf behind the physician at the Mayo Clinic. I guess I was too focused on the heart jumping all over his desk. I think my favorite scene when the kid visits the cockpit and Jabbar keeps denying he's Jabbar . Then when he gets sick and they have to pull him out of the co-pilot's chair, he's dressed in his Laker uniform, goggles and all. Inspired.

[BFrank]

I think my favorite scene when the kid visits the cockpit and Jabbar keeps denying he's Jabbar . Then when he gets sick and they have to pull him out of the co-pilot's chair, he's dressed in his Laker uniform, goggles and all. Inspired.

Yep.......that's a GOOD one!

[Dan Gould]

I think I've seen the movie enough that I've run out of things to notice, but one thing that did surprise me last night was the scene with the naked chest flashing across the scene. Not only was I surprised that TCM would run that but I had seen the edited version (the camera pans across jiggling boobs in the row of seats) so many times I had completely forgotten about the scene in the original.

Also nice to see "the shit is really going to hit the fan" in its unedited glory.

[BruceH]

I actually happened to see Zero Hour! on TV when I was somewhere around 6 or 7. Showing them back-to-back was inspired, and demonstrates how Airplane! lifted numerous chunks of dialog verbatim from the earlier movie.

[DukeCity]

Inspired by this thread, I found Zero Hour! on Netflix and put it at the top of my queue. Got it in the mail yesterday, and watched it right away.

Awesome!!!

Thanks for sharing!