Zero Hour!

 

                     

           Well believe it ladies and gentlemen, for I finally have found the movie that was inspired by the 1980 comedy classic Airplane! Staring Dana Andrews, to me, is most famous for playing Detective Mark McPherson, in the 1944 film noir classic Laura. Sterling Hayden most notably starred in The Killing a year before Zero Hour! was released. And surprisingly a Wisconsin Badgers, halfback legend Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch, who I didn't know was a famous football player that would later be in the NFL with such teams as the Los Angeles Rams.

           Basically, it is the same premise as Airplane! Although Ted Striker (Dana Andrews) has a wife (Linda Darnell) and a kid. So, Ted Striker has a good reason to help his own son when a food poisoning outbreak occurs and well, you know the whole story so, I'll just leave it at that.

            When the trio of ZAZ said that they used a good portion and dialog of the film, well watching it for the first time I was surprised at how much they used from this movie, and it was shocking yet funny at the same time. From a movie stand point the film is not the greatest movie I've seen, but it's really fascinating in terms of the story structure as and the characters though granted as the trio of ZAZ states, Zero Hour! is really the serious version to Airplane! and it is this movie takes itself seriously while Airplane! alone takes it on the goofy stage for which is the most incredible hilarious to ever be develop by human hands. The film itself there's not a whole lot to say other than well, it's in okay movie and I can understand why I've never heard of this movie before and surprisingly how either Hulu or Turner Classic Movies was able to put this film out for cable TV or streaming, but in all fairness the film is a real fascinating aspect to watch as well as you can see where the trio was able to go with in terms of jokes and what they were trying to create in terms of what the jokes they were able to create furthermore when you look at the Naked Gun films they did, you know you can find every cop movie out there and that's basically what they were trying to do hell, there's a million cop movies and TV shows that you can mesh together and create the Naked Gun films and yet while creating Airplane you can look at this film and see oh this is how they were able to come up with some jokes that you can laugh at over and over again, not just combining every disaster movie into Airplane!. Again the film isn't good, it's mostly decent, but if you love the film Airplane!, for sure I would highly recommend watching this movie on your local Hulu, just because you never know how much material landed on Airplane!, and watching this movie for the first time I was shocked but laughing at the same time with some of the scenes in the movie and then remembering what jokes reminded me of this scene it's just crazy even to seen on screen and in all honesty it was fascinating to see but more importantly without this movie we wouldn't get Airplane!, so in all fairness Zero Hour! was made for a purpose and that purpose was for three men to come up and write one of the best comedies of all time. So, if you're fan of the Airplane! movie and granted I'm talking about the only one not it's sequel, then you should sit down and watch Zero Hour! for understanding and reasons why this movie exists, but more importantly you only have to watch it once don't make it a habit, don't feel the need to watch it all the time.