Top Secret
| Year: | 1984 |
| Studio: | Paramount |
| Director: | Jim Abrahams/David Zucker/Jerry Zucker |
| Producer: | Jon Davidson/Hunt Lowry |
| Writer: | Jim Abrahams/David Zucker/Jerry Zucker |
| Cast: | Val Kilmer, Omar Shariff, Peter Cushing |
It's so long ago now, few people remember that the Zucker/Abrahams trio's follow up to the phenomenally successful Flying High was a flop on release.
God knows how, because while it doesn't reach the hallowed heights of their 1980 tribute to the campy airport dramas, they use the same m.o.; ridiculous story, the most quotable dialogue in film history and a plethora of visual gags.
It was Val Kilmer's film debut as Nick Rivers, an Elvis-inspired American rock star who travels to East Germany at the height of the Cold War to take part in a cultural festival.
But the festival is a front to divert the world's attention away from the real plans of the faux-Nazi, faux-Bolshevik East German leadership.
Nick is soon embroiled in a clandestine plot with the French Resistance in a story that could only come from the pen of a melodramatic thriller writer. As Nick himself says before he and Hillary nervously turn towards the camera; "I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground."""
Laugh out loud if the classic Zucker comedy is your style, and I could go on forever; 'Is this the Potato Farm?' 'Yes, I'm Albert Potato', 'Let me know if there's any change in his condition... he's dead', 'there is sauerkraut in my leederhausen'.
God knows how, because while it doesn't reach the hallowed heights of their 1980 tribute to the campy airport dramas, they use the same m.o.; ridiculous story, the most quotable dialogue in film history and a plethora of visual gags.
It was Val Kilmer's film debut as Nick Rivers, an Elvis-inspired American rock star who travels to East Germany at the height of the Cold War to take part in a cultural festival.
But the festival is a front to divert the world's attention away from the real plans of the faux-Nazi, faux-Bolshevik East German leadership.
Nick is soon embroiled in a clandestine plot with the French Resistance in a story that could only come from the pen of a melodramatic thriller writer. As Nick himself says before he and Hillary nervously turn towards the camera; "I'm not the first guy who fell in love with a woman he met at a restaurant who turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist only to lose her to her childhood lover who she last saw on a deserted island who then turned out fifteen years later to be the leader of the French underground."""
Laugh out loud if the classic Zucker comedy is your style, and I could go on forever; 'Is this the Potato Farm?' 'Yes, I'm Albert Potato', 'Let me know if there's any change in his condition... he's dead', 'there is sauerkraut in my leederhausen'.