Airplane

Question: When Over's wife gets the call about her husband's plane having problems, there is a horse in bed with her and she tells the horse to let himself out. This is the only joke in the movie I didn't understand. Is there anybody out there who got the joke and can help me understand it?

Answer: This is a reference to The Godfather, where a character being intimidated by the Mafia wakes up with his prize racehorse's severed head next to him on the bed. For comedy purposes this is twisted by the movie as an implied sexual relationship, when the horse is revealed to be alive.

Answer: This is an inside joke that Mrs. Over is cheating on her husband with a horse.

Answer: No, that was David Leisure, who was the Joe Izuzu Guy.

Pam-I-am

Actually, no it wasn't David Leisure, he plays one of the Krishnas.

Answer: The man that was punched was Conrad Palmisano. He's credited as Religious Zealot #4.

Bishop73

Question: Captain Oveur was saying things to Joey. What I didn't understand is the jokes behind the lines "Have you ever been in a Turkish Prison" and "Do you like movies about gladiators." What are the jokes behind these? Please explain. Thank-you.

Hamster

Chosen answer: All of his questions to Joey are filled with homosexual innuendos; the perverted captain is trying to see if Joey has any such tendencies. In a Turkish prison, men who are sexually frustrated will resort to "companionship" with other men (even forcefully). Movies about gladiators depict ripped, muscular men, and the question about seeing a "grown man naked" obviously fits the pattern.

Matty Blast

The gladiator reference is about Spartacus. There is a scene in there about homosexuality.

What scene are you talking about? If you mean the "snails and oysters" scene, that was not part of the movie until it was restored in 1991.

Answer: I believe this joke is just to make the watcher extremely uncomfortable and it works great.

Question: In the film Elaine is going around taking dinner orders on paper like a waitress which has never been the way airlines do it. They bring the cart down the aisle and then ask what you want. So my question is, is this an in-joke, a goof, or did some airlines really do it this way back then?

Gavin Jackson

Chosen answer: Airlines have done this in the past. Remember that back in the late 70's when this was filmed, flying was still somewhat of a rare occasion for a lot of people, and airlines treated customers much better.

LorgSkyegon

Question: I hear this film has nudity in it and yet it only has a PG rating. Even if it was brief, how did this film avoid an R rating?

Answer: To some extent, it depends upon the rater. However, there is some clarification in the PG description which says "Parental Guidance Suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children. This signifies that the film rated may contain some material parents might not like to expose to their young children - material that will clearly need to be examined or inquired about before children are allowed to attend the film. Explicit sex scenes and scenes of drug use are absent; nudity, if present, is seen only briefly, horror and violence do not exceed moderate levels." As seen in the movie - the nudity was seen only briefly - not more than a second. The rater felt it didn't deserve an "R" rating for that. At the time there was no PG-13 rating, which is what it would probably get today.

Zwn Annwn

Chosen answer: It's the Main Title music, composed, as was the rest of the score, by Elmer Bernstein.

Question: In the flashback scene in the bar, Striker throws his hat, but it comes back to him like a boomerang. He then throws his jacket, and it also comes back to him like a boomerang, but this time you can see the hand that throws it at him. Is the hand a crew member's, or it is intended to be somebody throwing it back at him?

Jackie Menechino

Chosen answer: Too hard to say - potentially both. I'm guessing the hand wasn't meant to be seen, but at the same time there's no reason why someone couldn't have just hurled hat back at him, so seeing the hand isn't really a mistake.

Revealing mistake: When Kramer is walking through the airport and all the cult members come after him and he's flipping them behind him, look down to the lower left and you can see the mat they are landing on. (00:54:50)

More mistakes in Airplane

Ted Striker: My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar.
Elaine Dickinson: When will you be back?
Ted Striker: I can't tell you that. It's classified.

More quotes from Airplane

Trivia: One of the special thanks in the end credits is to the Argon Oil Company, a fictional company in another ZAZ movie, "Kentucky Fried Movie". Argon is actually an elemental gas. (01:26:50)

More trivia for Airplane

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.