It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.
Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.
Airplane! lapped Zero Hour! so hard most people don’t know about the existence of the latter
it also spawned the whole genre and although Leslie Nielsen made lots of movies before this, his legacy is this as well as the other parody movies
It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.
Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.
Robert Stack apparently kept trying to play it like a comedy, and it took them a while to convince him to play it completely straight.