David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams teamed up to direct the spoof to end, or rather, start all spoofs. Airplane! took the disaster movie genre and wrung every hilarious contrivance from it, distilled the essence and presented audiences with pure comedy. There is not one minute of this film that isn't funny, even after 30 years.

Basing the story on movies like Zero Hour!, Airport and Airport 1975, the Zucker/Abrahams comedy machine shows us what happens during an ill-fated flight across country. The lead character, Ted Striker--played by Robert Hays--is a troubled ex-military pilot who has developed a fear of flying and a drinking problem--the problem being that he can't accurately aim liquids into his mouth. He boards the plane at the last minute to win back his sweetheart, stewardess Elaine.

The trouble begins when several of the passengers and the entire flight crew develop food poisoning, causing Ted to face his fears and take the plane's controls. Ted has to overcome his own troubled past, his issues with Elaine, a hostile air traffic controller and panicking passengers.

That's the plot in a nutshell but it's not important right now. There are hundreds of visual and verbal gags running throughout the movie and many notable cameos. NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a pilot named Roger, Peter Graves as the other pilot (named Oveur), Barbara Billingsley (aka June Cleaver) as an old lady who speaks jive, Robert Stack as the hard-hitting Captain Kramer, Lloyd Bridges as the chief air traffic controller and Leslie Nielsen as the deadpan Dr. Rumack (who speaks the movie's most famous line, "I am serious...and don't call me Shirley").

The inflatable autopilot, Otto, shares a tender moment with Elaine, Ted and Elaine's first meeting is shown in flashback as a disco-infused spoof of Casablanca and Ethel Merman plays a shell-shocked veteran who thinks he's Ethel Merman.

The movie did serious business at the box office, prompting a sequel two years later with most of the cast returning for a sci-fi spoof, though the creators of the original opted out. Airplane kick-started a whole genre of similar films that are still going strong today.