The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad was never the best of the Naked Gun movies (none of which quite matched the original Police Squad series for pure cleverness), but in case you ever wanted to see Leslie Nielsen assault a woman with a concrete dildo in pristine high definition video, here it is on Blu-ray.
If you don't remember 1988, The Naked Gun had Police Squad's Frank Drebin go from investigating heroin smuggling in the LA harbor to trying to foil an assassination plot against the Queen of England at a California Angels baseball game. If none of that made any sense then congratulations, you managed to survive the 90s without ever seeing reruns on TBS. The bad guy is the devilishly good Ricardo Montalban, who plays KHAAAAAAN!... I mean, Vincent Ludwig, a building developer mixed up with heroin and a plot to frame O.J. Simpson (seriously).
This of course comes from the writing team of Zucker / Abrahams / Zucker, the people who invented the zany spoof with Airplane!, Airplane 2: The Sequel, and Top Secret!. In The Naked Gun, David Zucker confess in the audio commentary, they moved away from the sort of clever wordplay that made the first Airplane! so quotable, and instead focused on things they hoped would sell better overseas. Like penis jokes. And pissing jokes. And the aforementioned concrete dildo. And the line “Nice beaver.”
Which leaves us with what, when I was 8, was possibly the funniest movie on the planet. Ttwo decades later, it's got a few chuckles, but isn't the sort of instant classic that Airplane! ended up being. Still, the nostalgia factor alone is worth giving it a spin.
It also features a cameo by “Weird Al” Yankovic, who, surprisingly, has aged better than the movie.
Blu-ray special features:
An audio commentary with writer/director David Zucker with Robert Weiss and Peter Tilden. And that's about it. Oh and a shiny 3d-looking slipcover. Only the best from a Best Buy exclusive.
"The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad" is on sale September 27, 2011 and is rated PG13. Action, Comedy, Crime. Directed by David Zucker. Written by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker. Starring Leslie Nielsen, OJ Simpson, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban.
