There must be a law requiring that every second full-length movie parody have Leslie Nielsen ( Airplane!, Naked Gun, Wrongfully Accused, you name it) in the cast. The master of deadpan returns this week in 2001: A Space Travesty, which makes jokes at the expense of a film whose name escapes me.
Still, against the odds, a few Nielsen-less spoofs have been greenlighted, including films with brothers Charlie Sheen ( Hot Shots: Part Deux) and Emilio Estevez ( National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon I). Stanley Donen even packed two parodies -- one of boxing dramas, another of musicals -- into a 1978 film aptly titled Movie Movie, with George C. Scott and a scintillating dance routine by Ann Reinking. And before that there was:
The Big Bus (1976), a lampoon of such disaster films as Airport (predating the 1980 Airplane!),in which the first nuclear-powered supersized bus sets off on its maiden run with Joseph Bologna and John Beck at the wheel and Stockard Channing, Jose Ferrer and Ruth Gordon voicing the intermittently funny lines. Comic riffs include cannibalism and oil-company sabotage, and the characters bear the sorts of names that let you know you're in extended sketch territory: Shoulders O'Brien (Beck) and Shorty Scotty (Ned Beatty).
You could raise your sights with Monty Python's witty commentary on religious films, Life of Brian, or lower them with a Wayans brothers spoof so popular they filmed a sequel even though they'd promised not to in the ads for the first one:
Scary Movie (2000) throws busty blondes, hysterical sidekicks and sexually confused heroes into the Cuisinart to mock such self-referential teen slasher flicks as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, complete with the villain in a mask out of Edvard Munch's The Scream. Marlon Wayans: "It's like I seen this all before." Anna Faris: "They had a killer at your old high school, Shorty?" Wayans: "Naw, it was in this movie Scream. Same dialogue and everything."
Mel Brooks has made a cinematic career out of this stuff, from the highs of his western parody Blazing Saddles to the lows of Dracula: Dead and Loving It. His 1977 contribution was an affectionate lampoon of Alfred Hitchcock's films:
High Anxiety, with Brooks as acrophobic (see Vertigo) psychiatrist (see Spellbound) Richard Thorndyke (see North by Northwest) on his way to become head of the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very, Nervous (see unsubtle). It's one set piece after another, including Brooks's impressive turn as a lounge singer and the car ride during which chauffeur Ron Carey suggests Brooks's predecessor was bumped off. "I think Dr. Ashley was a victim of -- foul play!" Cue the dramatic music, and startled looks from Brooks and Carey -- who glance out the window to see a bus drive by carrying the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, furiously playing away.
Or consider a spoof directed by Carl Reiner, Brooks's foil in the 2,000-year-old-man skits and the fellow who teamed with Steve Martin in 1982 to parody the film noir in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid:
You'd expect Fatal Instinct (1993) to sideswipe Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, but you might not expect the heroes to be shadowed by sax-playing Clarence Clemons (in a variation on the High Anxiety bus joke) or the quirky casting: Armand Assante as the clueless policeman-cum-lawyer beset by homicidal wife Kate Nelligan, lovestruck secretary Sherilyn Fenn and femme fatale Sean Young (Lana, Laura and Lola respectively). It's all straight out of the Airplane! don't-call-me-Shirley school of yuks. Young: "Got a light?" Assante produces a flashlight. Young (miffed): "How about a match?" Assante: "No, thanks, I've got plenty." A game effort, but perhaps best filed under parodies lost.