We Remember Leslie Nielsen0

Today I just want to pay my respects to the late great Leslie Nielsen. If you’re around my age you’ll probably remember him as king of the hilarious spoof movies in the eighties and nineties. If you’re a lot younger you might know him as the old guy in the not very funny modern spoof movies of the last decade. If you’re a lot older you may remember his large body of work (mainly in TV) as a serious actor during the fifties and sixties. His screen career has spanned six decades, 61 years if you include The Waterman Movie slated to come out next year.

One of his first theatrical roles was in the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet. A great movie that is still considered to be a landmark film of it’s genre and to be honest I must say that the effects look great, considering it was made in 1956 over twenty years before Star Wars (Yes, Star Wars is still my benchmark of everything sci-fi). There are quite a number of good dramas he did out there but he will always be remembered for the comedy. If you want to see something really wierd try to find his audition footage for the villain in Ben Hur. You keep expecting him to say something stupid or fall over but he never does. It’s a good thing he found his true calling.

But it wasn’t until the 1980 comedy giant Airplane (Flying High in Australia) that his true comic genius was finally revealed. This film was the birth of what is now considered the spoof genre. With over the top sight gags and ridiculous dialogue, the film amped up the silly factor of regular comedies but had it set in the serious format of an airline disaster movie. This split the difference between what is a satire and what is a spoof. Even though Nielsen’s role was only a small one, it is still his performance that is remembered to this day.

Two years later Nielsen starred in a little TV show called Police Squad playing the character that would define his career, Detective Frank Drebin. The show was a piss take of the serious detective drama and spawned the movie The Naked Gun which in turn spawned two sequels. The Naked Gun trilogy is as close as you can get to a perfect spoof series. They are just so damn funny even twenty years after the fact. Why are they so good? Leslie Nielsen that’s why (Okay, Priscilla Presley is pretty dam hot too). He also did many other spoof movies such as Spy Hard, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Wrongfully Accused but none of them are quite as good or memorable as Naked Gun.

So to celebrate his life, I suggest that you grab one of his movies and laugh. That’s all for me today. Although I have found it very hard to find a good collection of his truly funniest moments here is a clip of some pretty good ones. Watch out Mel Brooks, we all know you’re next.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiO3jn1lGQs]

Rowan

P.S. Screw you Pierce for undercutting me on this. Get your own day.