NAKED GUN, THE: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! - DVD review

The folks at Paramount continue relentlessly forward with their "I Love the 80's" series of repackaged material. Their second wave of DVD releases includes "Ordinary People," "An Officer and a Gentleman," "The Accused," "Top Secret!," "Cheech & Chong Still Smokin'," and the film under consideration here, "The Naked Gun, from the Files of Police Squad!"

All of these re-releases appear to be identical to the discs Paramount issued a few years earlier, only this time they get slightly different artwork, new slipcovers, and a bonus CD of "Music from the 80's" that contains "Lips Like Sugar" by Echo & the Bunnymen, "Chains of Love" by Erasure, "Need You Tonight" by INXS, and "Take on Me" by a-ha. Obviously, the studio brass do not intend these reissues for people who already own the movies on disc; they mean them for new buyers who need that extra incentive to purchase them. Since, so far, they're all good movies in pretty decent shape, you can't go wrong, especially with "The Naked Gun," a genuine prize.

Speaking of comedy, I'm sure most people recognize there's a built-in audience hierarchy that artists, writers, and filmmakers keep in mind when they produce their entertainments. At the top of the pile is usually the poem, potentially the most complex structure of all. Next comes the novel, which calls upon a reader's ability to observe and reason. Then the stage play, followed by the movie. At the bottom of the ladder is the TV show, for which producers think viewers so witless they have to use laugh tracks to let them know where the jokes are. I mention this because "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" began on television, where it cultivated a small but loyal following during its brief run. However, satire, and its sub category, parody, demands a degree of sophistication from its audience, or at least a degree of awareness, and television obviously didn't provide it.

Then, there was this first of the "Naked Gun" movies in 1988 and, whammo, instant success with slightly more-hip viewers. "The Naked Gun" was so successful, in fact, that it spawned two sequels, "The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear" in 1991 and "The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult" in 1994. The sequels didn't match the original in terms of laughs-per-minute, but they maintained the same level of zaniness, wringing the last ounce of humor from the format. No complaints about the original, though, and it could hardly lose with Jerry and David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Pat Proft as the filmmakers. They're the team that had brought us "Airplane!" and "Top Secret!" a few years earlier, and they are masters of the exclamation mark.

In "The Naked Gun" Leslie Nielsen stars as Lt. Frank Drebin of the Los Angeles Police Squad. He is, without a doubt, the world's dumbest policeman, on a par for klutziness with the immortal Inspector Clouseau. It wasn't always thus for Nielsen, though. He is one of the few actors in Hollywood to have metamorphosed into comedic preeminence. His career began long before his doing comedy, as a leading man in films like "Forbidden Planet" (1956), "Tammy and the Bachelor" (1957), "Dark Intruder" (1965), and "Beau Geste" (1966). Then there was a long period of supporting roles, followed by his breakthrough into funny business with "Airplane!" in 1980. But it wouldn't be until the "Naked Gun" series that he came into his own as one of America's best-known comic actors. Who would have guessed until he tried. Maybe it was Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers who first saw his possibilities; after all, it was they who put a whole slew of former movie tough guys into their wacky pictures and made them play the comedy straight. Remember Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Chuck Conners, and the rest from "Airplane!"? They were all great, but it was Nielsen who went on to comedic glory. Abrahams and the Zuckers have accomplished something of that sort with "The Naked Gun," too, in that big George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson, and Ricardo Montalban also come off as pretty funny guys. I suppose it's a gift.

Getting back to the story, the movie starts with Drebin in Beirut, where he thwarts an international terrorist plot against the U.S., breaking up a meeting of Khadafi, Khomeini, Gorbachev, Idi Amin, and Yasir Arafat (or Ringo Starr, it's hard to tell). Returning to the States a hero, he's greeted by his long-suffering partner and straight man, Capt. Ed Hocken, played with wonderfully deliberate, deadpan drollness by Kennedy. There, Drebin immediately gets involved tracking down a drug-smuggling ring led by millionaire shipping-tycoon Vincent Ludwig (Montalban).

Meanwhile, another of Drebin's colleagues in crime-busting, the equally inept Nordberg (Simpson), gets himself subjected to endless physical abuse at the hands of the bad guys (you may be cheering this today), winding up in the hospital where he remains for the rest of the picture continuing to endure Drebin's mistreatment (Drebin manages successfully to rebreak both of Nordberg's arms).

Then Drebin meets the love of his life, or at least the love of his next few movies, Jane Spencer, played by Priscilla Presley with an appropriately empty-headed serenity and a clumsiness to match Drebin's own. They're a perfect pair. Together, they are also too much for the villains, who turn out to be more than just drug smugglers but killers planning to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II. The story winds up at a professional baseball game where the Queen is to make an appearance. The villains intend to shoot her during the seventh-inning stretch by using a person under sensory-induced hypnosis. Nielsen's sidesplitting singing of the national anthem at home plate is worth the price of the whole picture.

The sequels to "The Naked Gun" never quite captured the spirit of the original, perhaps because the filmmakers recycled so many of the gags, so it's nice to have original on hand, even if the studio hasn't added anything new to the package. The opening gambit during the credits, for instance, involving a police car seen from the driver's perspective motoring through highways, byways, buildings, living rooms, bath stalls, etc., is mildly amusing, and the rest of the film often gets laugh-out-loud funny, tears-to-the-eyes comical, sometimes fall-down-on-the-floor hysterical. We see echoes of "Airplane!" in it, for sure, and more often than not reflections of "MAD" magazine. Indeed, the whole movie plays out like one of those old Jack Davis cartoons so crammed full of business you have to look closely at everything in the background to get all the jokes.

Venerable police stories, and many new ones, may not be the same to you after watching "The Naked Gun." Also sprucing up things, look for cameos by "Weird Al" Yankovic, John Houseman, Reggie Jackson, and others, who add to the fun. There's even a lineup of sports announcers: Dick Vitale, Dick Enberg, Jim Palmer, Mel Allen, Curt Gowdy, Tim McCarver, and Dr. Joyce Brothers (?). Wonderful stuff.

Video:
As usual, Paramount's image quality is reasonably good in this 1.85:1 ratio, anamorphic transfer. The colors are bright, sometimes appearing too bright, but appropriate for such a cartoonlike film. The hues are fairly natural, though, with faces maybe a little dark; and there is not much noticeable bleed-through anywhere. Distractions are few, mainly a degree of natural film grain in larger patches of color, especially evident in nighttime shots. Some ticks and flecks remind us that the filmmakers shot the movie several decades ago, and that this is not a fully restored edition. Still and all, the video looks OK.

Audio:
The English soundtrack comes in Dolby Digital 5.1, and it, too, is above average, particularly for its day, just before the widespread use of 5.1 audio. The remixed sound features a broad front-channel stereo spread, while the rear-channels fill in mainly a pleasant musical bloom. Overall, the audio is a little bright and sharp-edged in the loudest passages but generally realistic. As we might expect, the dynamics are not too robust, and the frequency extremes appear limited.

Extras:
The primary (and practically only) bonus item is a group commentary by director David Zucker, producer Robert Weiss, and host Peter Tilden. They laugh and joke and have a high old time telling us about the making of the movie. Then there are twenty-seven scene selections, a widescreen theatrical trailer, English and French spoken languages, English captions for the hearing impaired, and the CD and slipcover I mentioned at the outset.

Parting Thoughts:
"The Naked Gun" may not be the greatest screen comedy of all time nor as innovative as its progenitor, "Airplane!"; nevertheless, it is still a hilarious movie and worthy of purchase by anyone with a funny bone in his body.

"Nice beaver!"