Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack and Lee Terri

"The survival of everyone on board depends on just one thing: finding someone on board who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner."

Was Airplane! nominated for any Oscars®? No! Is Airplane! one of the funniest movies of all time? Surely! (Just don’t call him Shirley.) In keeping with the use of fractions favored by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers, the Academy celebrates the 25th½ Anniversary of the granddaddy of all parody films.

Airplane! not only spoofed the disaster movies of the ‘70s, it invented a new genre of films that continues to this day. Many of those movies have been perpetrated upon an unsuspecting public by these filmmakers working as a team, including Top Secret!, the Naked Gun series, and the most recent installments of the Scary Movie franchise.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julie Hagerty

When an airplane’s crew becomes ill after eating some bad fish, only ex-Navy pilot Ted Stryker (Robert Hays) can safely land the plane. But with his fear of flying and a strange mix of passengers on board, including singing nuns and jive-talking dudes, and with his ditzy former girlfriend serving as the flight’s stewardess, will the plane get to Chicago before disaster strikes? Does it matter? You’ll be laughing too hard to care.

Cast: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Julie Hagerty, Robert Hays, Leslie Nielsen, Lorna Patterson, Robert Stack, Stephen Stucker, Otto.

Writers and Directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker; Producer Jon Davison; Director of Photography Joseph Biroc, A.S.C.; Production Designer Ward Preston; Film Editor Patrick Kennedy; Music Elmer Bernstein; Costume Designer Rosanna Norton; Set Decorator Anne D. McCulley; Executive Producers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker; Associate Producer Hunt Lowry; Sound Editor Jim Troutman; A Howard W. Koch Production; Released through Paramount Pictures; Print courtesy of Paramount Pictures; Metrocolor; 35mm; 88 minutes; 1980.