Bovie Movie

This spoof of the Airport series of disaster movies relies on ridiculous sight gags, groan-inducing dialogue, and deadpan acting — a comedy style that would be imitated for the next 20 years. Airplane! pulls out all the clich?s as alcoholic pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays), who’s developed a fear of flying due to wartime trauma, boards a jumbo jet in an attempt to woo back his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Hagerty). Food poisoning decimates the passengers and crew, leaving it up to Striker to land the plane, with the help of a glue-sniffing air traffic controller (Lloyd Bridges) and Striker’s vengeful former captain (Robert Stack), who must both talk him down. Along the way, we meet a clutch of stock disaster movie passengers like the guitar-strumming nun, a sick little girl, a frightened old lady, and two African-American travelers whose “jive” has to be subtitled. Leslie Nielsen portrays the plane’s doctor, launching a new phase of the actor’s career that carried him through the next two decades in several similarly comedic roles. The trio of directors Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker responsible for the film would eventually go on to solo careers, but not before making Top Secret! and Ruthless People.

Ted Kotcheff continues his First Blood fervor with Uncommon Valor. Gene Hackman stars as Cal Rhodes, a former Marine Colonel who has been getting the run-around for ten years from the government concerning the disappearance of his son and his buddies - all Marines who enlisted years prior and served in Vietnam. Rhodes’ son was last seen in Laos, where he was fighting in the war and captured as a POW. When word gets back to Rhodes that the men may still be alive and held in prison camps, but the government still has the men listed as missing in action, Rhodes decides to take matters into his own hands. Contacting an old friend, oil baron MacGregor (Robert Stack), Rhodes is granted financial backing to form his own incursion force. He assembles a crack team of men, puts them through an intensive period of training. and heads back with them into the Laotian jungles to search for the MIAs.