However, ABC scheduled Police Squad! against ratings powerhouses on the opposing networks, and wound up pulling the plug after four episodes had been broadcast in the spring of 1982. Still, ZAZ fans wouldn't let the series be forgotten, and its cult following continued to grow exponentially once the six completed episodes made their way onto home video. By 1988, ZAZ were ready to bring the misadventures of Lt. Frank Drebin to the big screen, and The Naked Gun (1988) was prepped for a Christmas season release.
The audacious opening of The Naked Gun follows Nielsen's vacantly stalwart plainclothes cop as he invades Beirut and delivers a single-handed, Schwarzenegger-meets-Stooges smack-down to Khomeini, Qadafi, Castro, Gorbachev, Arafat and other foreign policy boogeymen of the era. Thereafter, the plot (such as it is) turns to Drebin's partner Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), who has tracked a rumored drug drop to a harbored trawler. His attempted bust results in a hail of bullets and a string of other indignities before he drops over the side.
Drebin, determined to clear his now-comatose partner's name, eventually links Nordberg's investigation to the ship's owner, the powerful businessman and philanthropist Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban). While in fact responsible for Nordberg's shooting, Ludwig has further motives for avoiding Drebin's ham-handed sleuthing. While bankrolling a prestigious Los Angeles visit by Queen Elizabeth II, Ludwig has clandestinely accepted a lucrative contract on Her Majesty's life from a terrorist syndicate. Realizing that Ludwig will play his final hand at the Angels game to which the Queen's been invited, Drebin determines to break onto the field in any way possible, and the film proceeds to a riotous showdown.
All this, of course, is just a framework for ZAZ to festoon with their trademarked barrage of visual and verbal gags. The running jokes from the series, such as Drebin's crash-then-park crime scene arrivals, and the impossibly tall cop whose head is consistently out of frame, make welcome appearances. ZAZ's humor is seldom delicate, but the results can be achingly funny, as best demonstrated by the sequence where Drebin excuses himself from a press conference, and enters the men's room with a still-live lapel mike. The stadium sequence delivers an inspired collection of baseball gags, right down to a gallery of players' wives expectorating tobacco juice.
Priscilla Presley, whose on-camera career had previously been limited to her five-year stint on TV's Dallas, proved very adept at delivering ZAZ's brand of straight-faced farce. Her first appearance as Jane Spencer, Ludwig's personal assistant, is designed to evoke Charlotte Rampling's balcony entrance in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and ends with an off-camera trip and stumble down the stairs. Veteran character actors Ricardo Montalban and George Kennedy (as Drebin's immediate superior) are also more than willing to spoof themselves in the lunatic proceedings.
Due to his efforts for ZAZ, the stolid veteran Nielsen wound up having a very full second career as a farceur. "Audiences love Leslie," David Zucker told the New York Times in the wake of The Naked Gun's release. "Part of it is that he looks so dignified and serious, and yet he betrays such insecurity, such a fumbling quality." The profitability of The Naked Gun wound up ensuring two sequels, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) and The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). Nielsen has since gone on to headline a string of genre parodies like Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), Spy Hard (1996) and Wrongfully Accused (1998).
Producer: Jim Abrahams, Robert K. Weiss, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker
Director: David Zucker
Screenplay: Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Pat Proft
Cinematography: Robert M. Stevens
Film Editing: Michael Jablow
Art Direction: Donald B. Woodruff
Music: Ira Newborn
Cast: Leslie Nielsen (Lt. Frank Drebin), Priscilla Presley (Jane Spencer), Ricardo Montalban (Vincent Ludwig), George Kennedy (Capt. Ed Hocken), Susan Beaubian (Wilma Nordberg), Nancy Marchand (Mayor).
C-85m. Letterboxed.
by Jay Steinberg
