I have been watching this series on CNN called The History of Comedy, and for the most part I was very familiar with all the content. I did discover more about a few comedians I wasn’t as familiar with and it has been entertaining to watch so I am not knocking it my any means.
But the biggest mind-blowing thing was something I did not know about one of my all-time favorite movies: Airplane! The Zucker Brothers and their partner Jim Abrahams are responsible for the Airplane series and The Naked Gun series. These three fellas together and on their own brought countless other spoof and parody classics to the screen with Val Kilmer’s Top Secret, the Hot Shots films with Charlie Sheen, High School High, The Kentucky Fried Movie, and Mafia!
I’d like to think other films like the Scary Movie franchise and all the other parody 
films to follow all took a nod to what these three guys started. But did you know that Airplane was a parody of a 1957 film called Zero Hour? I had no idea.
Jerry Zucker stated that they found so much humor in Zero Hour that they decided to make their own version but with a nonstop assault of humor and laughs. No matter how many times I watch Airplane or the sequel I still laugh at the same jokes I’ve heard a gang of times. That also goes for the Naked Gun movies, especially now looking back at O.J. Simpson doing a comedic role and getting constantly beat up over and over.
After watching the History of Comedy episode that mentioned Zero Hour I went and looked it up on YouTube. You can view the full movie but someone posted this comparison clip video that is all you really need.
