Val Kilmer passed away not too long back. When he did, there was the usual media outpouring and people watching/talking about his films. Top Gun, Heat, The Doors, Tombstone and even Batman Forever. I didn’t watch any of those. Do you know what I watched? Top Secret! Val’s first film role and one of several spoof movies made following Airplane! After the credits rolled, and me laughing a lot, I asked myself a question. What happened to spoof films?

The first time I ever saw tits in a film was in Airplane!… I think. It’s that scene where everyone is panicking because there’s no pilot and the plane is in trouble, then some lass pops up, full-frame and jiggles her wabs about. Actually, the first time my seeing tits on film could’ve been Clash of the Titans. Regardless, Airplane! was the brainchild of the trio, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker – collectively known as ZAZ. With the success of Airplane! in 1980 came the bandwagon jumping, and the spoof film genre really took of. Well, to be completely fair, ZAZ really kickstarted the spoof film genre with The Kentucky Fried Movie three years earlier. You know something? I think that The Kentucky Fried Movie could have been the first time I saw tits in a film. And I don’t mean Big Jim Slade’s.

I had better put this bit here before I get some backlash. Yes, I am fully aware that the spoof film genre existed before The Kentucky Fried Movie. Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein are two of the finest examples, which made fun of Westerns and horror films respectively. Though I feel that they fall more into parody than spoof. They even date back further than that and all the way to 1905s The Little Train Robbery which made fun of 1903s The Great Train Robbery. But my point is that the ZAZ team created a very specific mould of spoof movies with Airplane!, a mould that many others tried to fill.

The Kentucky Fried Movie may have pre-dated Airplane! by three years, but it was definitely the latter’s success that popularised the spoof genre. It was a rather unique blend of humour that was just starting to emerge. Airplane! is actually a remake of the film, Zero Hour! (which itself was a remake of Flight into Danger). The story goes that ZAZ had seen Zero Hour!, which was supposed to be serious drama about an airplane in trouble, and found it hilarious. A lot of the dialogue, characters and scenes in Airplane! are taken verbatim from Zero Hour! Then there was the fact that airport disaster films were popular in the ’70s, such as the Airport film series. So they decided to take a serious drama, and make it funny.

The real comedy comes from the fact that ZAZ hired known and respected actors who were famed for dramatic roles, such as Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, and of course, Leslie Nielsen. The serious acting bounced off well against the sillier aspects, and all of the other spoof films soon followed suit and copied that formula. The spoof film genre was massively popular throughout the 1980s, a good chunk of the ’90s too. Then came the 2000s and while spoof films were still being made, they were becoming less and less funny. In fact, I’d even suggest that the last truly good spoof film was Scary Movie from 2000. Nowadays. you don’t really see spoof films being made and the genre seems to have all but died out. However, it looks to be making a bit of a comeback as there is a new The Naked Gun sequel coming out very soon, and there’s also a new Scary Movie sequel coming next year. It’s almost like the old guard are coming back to try to revive the dead genre.

But, why did the genre fall out of popularity? Now, it is important to know that I’m trying to differentiate between a parody film and a spoof film. They’re similar, but not quite the same thing. Something like the awesome Shaun Of The Dead is a parody and a very good one. The Austin Powers trilogy are parodies. A spoof is a film that tries to recreate that ZAZ template and walk the same path that Airplane! did. It’s all of those flicks that were titled with the Movie suffix following the success of Scary Movie. Not Another Teen Movie, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie, Extreme Movie and any of the others I may have forgotten. There was this slew of Movie flicks that tired to spoof any and everything… and eventually destroyed the genre.

Aside from not being very funny, these Movie movies often missed the popularity boat. The reason that the likes of Airplane! and Scary Movie worked is because they were made at a time when the specific films they were poking fun at were very much in the zeitgeist. 1980s Airplane! may have been a remake of 1957s Zero Hour!, but it was made and released when the Airport disaster films were popular. As the title suggests, The Concorde… Airport ’79 was released in 1979 and Airplane! was released in 1980. The airport disaster genre flicks were awful, but they were popular. Scary Movie was released in 2000, the same year that Scream 3 (the film series it was spoofing) was released. Timing was a big reason that these films worked. A lot of these Movie movies were released long after the films they were making fun of had already been released.

Then there’s the fact that they were rarely focused. A good spoof film spoofs one film really damn well. It can have references to other films, but it’s main focus is always one specific flick. Hot Shots! may have been spoofing Top Gun… five years after Top Gun was released – but it focused on being a funny Top Gun so well (and other references) that it worked. Latter spoof films completely missed this memo and just made fun of anything that was popular with no focus Look at the awful Epic Movie for proof. This one doesn’t spoof any one thing well and it just tried (and failed) to make fun anything that was popular at the time. Films, celebrities, anything.

Perhaps the worst crime that these modern spoof films made was that they lacked subtlety and restraint. A good spoof lets the writing and jokes do all the heavy lifting, the actors are just there for the ride. This goes back to ZAZ’s idea to hire serious actors for Airplane! The straighter that Leslie Nielsen played Dr. Rumack, the funnier it was when all the crazy kicked off. It’s almost as if the actors had no idea that they were in a comedy. The same goes for Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots! He was known as a serious actor at the time. Charlie did flicks like Platoon, Wall Street and Young Guns before Hot Shots! That’s not to say that Charlie Sheen never did comedy before, he did, but it wasn’t what he was known for and certainly not the more outlandish comedy of the spoof genre.

Being serious in the middle of crazy comedy is hard to do effectively. While not a spoof (more a parody) one of the very best examples of this is with The Muppet Christmas Carol. The Muppets are famed for their unique brand of off-the-wall comedy. They’re also famed for working with some huge human stars too. The way that Michael Caine plays Ebenezer Scrooge dead straight, as serious as a heart attack, all while The Muppets are doing their thing – that’s what makes The Muppet Christmas Carol really work. If Michael had played the role to compete with The Muppets’ zaniness, the film wouldn’t have worked and we would’ve long forgotten it.

This is what was missing from all of those Movie movies. The subtlety and restraint to know when to let the writing and jokes do the work. In more modern spoofs, the actors play up to the fact that they are in a spoof film. They overact, overreact and try to hit you in the face with a sledgehammer that you are watching a spoof film. Even the great Leslie Nielsen became guilty of this. As great as he was in Airplane! and Police Squad! (and yeah, the first two The Naked Gun films), pretty much became a parody of himself in later films. Let’s be honest, as great as Leslie was in those earlier flicks, he was pretty crap in the likes of Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Spy Hard and Wrongfully Accused (to name a few). The subtlety and restraint was gone, Leslie Nielsen was no longer the straight actor in a spoof, he was a comedy actor playing up (overtly so) to his comedy persona… and it just didn’t work.

Of course, the fact that the writing and jokes of those awful spoof flicks was so bad didn’t help. I guess that you can’t really do the subtlety and restraint thing and let the writing and jokes do the work, when the writing and jokes are just not funny to begin with. Maybe that’s why the actors became increasingly more over the top, to try to cover the awful writing? With The Naked Gun coming back very soon, and with the casting of Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr, I’m willing to give it a chance. Liam does have some pretty gargantuan shoes to fill, but him coming from a more serious acting background may just work as it did for Leslie Nielsen. I’m just a bit worried that the film will be for “a modern audience” and not us classic spoof film fans.