The Naked Gun
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The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! is the first film in a series of comedy movies starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, and O.J. Simpson. The three films (the other two being ', and ') chronicle the adventures of Nielsen's character, the bumbling police detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin.
The movie series is based on the character created by Nielsen in the television series Police Squad! The core creative team behind Police Squad! and the movie series includes Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Pat Proft in varying combinations.
The films all feature extremely fast-paced, off-the-wall, slapstick style comedy, including a lot of visual and verbal puns and gags.
In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted the first Naked Gun the 39th greatest comedy film of all time.
In addition to the aforementioned cast, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! co-stars Ricardo Montalban, Jeannette Charles, Raye Birk, and Nancy Marchand. "Weird Al" Yankovic, Joe Grifasi, Lawrence Tierney, John Houseman (his last film), and Mark Holton have cameo roles.
Major League Baseball players Reggie Jackson, Jay Johnstone, Randy Harvey, Brett Bartlett, and Charles Fick have cameo roles as themselves, as do umpires Joe West and Hank Robinson. Professional announcers Curt Gowdy, Jim Palmer, Tim McCarver, Mel Allen, Dick Enberg, Dick Vitale, and Dr. Joyce Brothers appear as play-by-play commentators.
Plot
The plot of the series is a basic parody of detective film clichés, featuring stereotypical characters, settings, and situations. Many other film genres and styles are mocked as well, and the movies are full of references to current events and contemporary pop culture.
The movie starts in a meeting in Beirut with a collection of anti-American leaders; Ayatollah Khomeni, Mikhail Gorbachev (who claims he has the Americans believing he is "a nice guy"), Yasser Arafat, Muammar al-Qaddafi and Idi Amin, who are planning a terrorist act. The man who is later shown to be Papshmir is seen at this meeting. It turns out that Frank Drebin has been posing undercover as a waiter; he beats up all the attendees, wipes off Gorbachev's forehead spot, and escapes/falls out the window.
Back in Los Angeles, officer Nordberg (Simpson) is investigating a heroin drug operation at the docks when he is seen by villain-in-disguise Vincent Ludwig (Montalbán), and is shot numerous times by Ludwig's goons before falling into the harbor. (It is a running gag that Nordberg keeps getting badly injured, but somehow manages to survive.) After being briefed on the case by his colleague Ed (Kennedy), Frank visits Nordberg in hospital, where there is later another attempt on the injured man's life. Frank chases the assassin (a doctor) in a commandeered car operated by a panicked student driver and Houseman's unflappable instructor, until the assassin crashes an army rocket into a fireworks factory. Over the ensuing carnage, Drebin proclaims "There's nothing to see here!" to the assembled onlookers.
Papshmir is seen meeting with Vincent Ludwig in his office, where Ludwig says that he will assassinate Queen Elizabeth II (who is on a state visit to the USA) for $20 million. Ludwig demonstrates that he has a way of turning anyone into an unknowing assassin at the press of Ludwig's beeper; it appears that the victims are responding to a post-hypnotic suggestion, but the film makes no effort to clarify the point.
As he works on the case, Drebin meets and falls in love with Ludwig's assistant Jane Spencer (Presley). It is eventually revealed that Jane knows nothing about Ludwig's plot, and after the pair spend the night together, she helps Frank with his investigation.
Following Drebin-inspired disasters at a reception for the Queen and Ludwig's penthouse, the climax of the film centers on the Queen's visit to a California Angels baseball game. Frank must find out how Ludwig plans to assassinate her, while also hiding from his fellow policemen, who are now under orders to arrest him. Frank knocks out "renowned opera singer" Enrico Palazzo, takes his clothes and proceeds to brutally mangle the US national anthem, along with Palazzo's reputation. Frank then pretends to be an umpire to search the players for the assassin, but inadvertantly triggers an all-out brawl between the Angels and their opponent the Seattle Mariners. He eventually saves the Queen's life by accidentally shooting a fat woman with a sleep-inducing dart fired from his cufflinks; the woman falls on top of the hypnotized player (Reggie Jackson) who was about to shoot the Queen. (The crowd then cheers "Enrico Palazzo's" heroics.) Ludwig escapes to the top of the stadium, and holds Jane hostage, where Frank shoots him with his other cufflink dart. Ludwig falls several stories off the stadium balcony, smashing to earth in the parking lot and getting run over by both a bus and a steamroller. A marching band then tromps over his flattened body, pressing the beeper which makes Jane try to kill Frank. Frank talks her out of it, and gives her an engagement ring. His speech is broadcast on the stadium screen, causing the teams to stop fighting and make up. The mayor thanks Frank, saying the whole world owes him a debt of gratitude, and he is also congratulated by Nordberg. The latter, while still wheelchair-bound, seems much better until Frank pats him on the back, sending him zooming down the aisle and up over the edge of the stadium as the movie ends.
Film links and references
Film spoofs
- The type of hypnosis featured in the movie has its origins in the thriller Telefon (starring Charles Bronson and Donald Pleasence), in which American and Russian 'sleeper agents' are forced to commit sabotage acts when they hear one line of a special poem recited.
- When Frank and Ed are scolded by the mayor for destroying Ludwig's office, Frank adapts a sentence about him shooting apparent murderers (who have turned out to be actors) with similar lines used by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.
- Ludwig's enraged rant against Drebin ("I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! etc.) comes word-for-word from Al Capone's tirade against Eliot Ness in The Untouchables.
- The character of Ted Olsen is presumably a parody of Q from the James Bond film series.
Movie references
- The 2005 "PTV" episode of Family Guy parodied the Naked Gun films, namely the first scene in the first Naked Gun film in which Drebin spies on a terrorist meeting and starts a brawl. In the Family Guy version Stewie Griffin is spying on Osama bin Laden's terrorist meeting; the scene, in which Stewie attacks the terrorists, is accompanied by the overture "Drebin - Hero!", from the second Naked Gun film's pre-credit sequence. It goes on to mimic lines of dialogue and camera angles from the film, including a moment where Stewie tells the terrorists "Don't ever let me catch you in Quahog" before he falls backwards out of a cave window. Afterwards, the show parodied the opening sequence of the film series, in which a police car (in this case, Stewie on his tricycle) goes through unusual areas like a woman's locker room, Oz, and even Springfield.
Trademark gags
Many of the posters and video/DVD covers for the Naked Gun films show an entire handgun cartridge being shot through the air--complete with bullet and brass casing. Of course, this is completely impossible since, when a gun is fired, the lead bullet leaves the barrel and the casing is discarded. This is a sight gag supposedly created for the appreciation of viewers familiar with such concepts.The box is more than likely a phallic representation, as the movie frequently incorporates images designed to look like swim-suit covered body parts.
See also
External links
- [Naked Gun quotes] at MovieWavs.com
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