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1970’s “Airport” was the highest-grossing film of its year, a best picture nominee adapted from a bestselling book and starring the likes of Dean Martin, Burt Lancaster, and Oscar-nominated Maureen Stapleton and winner Helen Hayes. Needless to say, it was a cultural phenomenon and images like a hysterical old lady being slapped and a planeful of passengers preparing for a crash landing were emblazoned in the minds of millions. While rapidly-diminishing-in-quality sequels would eventually kill the self-serious franchise, “Airplane!” arrived at an ideal moment (one year after the poorly-reviewed “The Concorde” aka “Airport ’79”) when audiences could recite the “Airport” story beats by heart, and were ready to laugh at them.
“Top Secret!” took a riskier track, tackling genres that had long gone out of fashion; the final Elvis film had come out in 1969, and WWII films had been largely supplanted in Hollywood by Vietnam films like “Coming Home,” “Apocalypse Now” (which Jim Abrahams would later spoof with “Hot Shots! Part Deux”) and “First Blood.”
But “Top Secret!” was made by people who knew the visual language of their parody’s subject inside and out. They’d even hired the ideal crew members for their parody, with cinematographer Christopher Challis having worked on several classic British World War II movies and composer Maurice Jarre known for his music in David Lean war epics.
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With this team, the initial set-up of war movie cliches like the heroes inadvertently crawling right up to an enemy soldier’s boots was effective because it rang true; it was the ideal set up for a punchline. That made the comedic reversal of the cliche — the hero avoids detection because there’s nobody actually in the boots — even funnier.
That’s “Top Secret!” in a nutshell, a loving recreation of the conventions of a war movie, milking those conventions for every possible laugh.
