Leslie Nielsen

[6] On a continental flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, everyone who ate the fish dinner becomes gravely ill, including the entire cockpit crew. It’s up to a traumatized war pilot (Robert Hays) and a bumbling ground team (including Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges) to bring the imperiled flight to a safe landing. That’s the scenario behind this goofy comedy from writer/directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, …

[7] Walter Pidgeon and Leslie Nielsen star in this glossy MGM production about a starship crew investigating a planet where a colony of humans has gone mysteriously quiet. Once there, they discover most of the colonists were killed by a mysterious force. But a scientist (Pidgeon) and his daughter (Anne Francis) appear to be immune to the dangerous entity. Pidgeon shares with the team’s captain …

[5] C. Thomas Howell (The Hitcher) headlines this politically incorrect comedy about a teen who overdoses on tanning pills to appear black, so he can win a full scholarship to Harvard law school. While hiding his identity from a love interest (Rae Dawn Chong) and a professor (James Earl Jones) who comes to think highly of him, Howell’s character experiences racism first-hand and comes to …

[5] A masked killer stalks four teenagers at the prom, six years after they accidentally killed a fellow classmate. Prom Night is part of the slasher boom of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as the sister of the killed classmate. Leslie Nielsen also appears as her father. Neither of their talents are put to especially good use here, though. The …

[7] A gaggle of Oscar-winners go topsy-turvy and fight to survive when a luxury liner capsizes at sea in the trend-setting disaster flick, The Poseidon Adventure. The film delivers on producer Irwin Allen’s desire to blow shit up (think of him as the proto-Michael Bay), but also manages to give its venerable cast plenty to chew on. The characters are engaging and no one is …

[8] George Romero directs an anthology from Stephen King in this homage to colorful horror comics of the 1950s. All five tales are pretty good. In Father’s Day, a deceased patriarch comes back to life to torment his heirs. Then Stephen King steps in front of the camera, playing a goofy hillbilly who discovers a deadly meteor in The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verill. Leslie …